Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis soaked up the crowd’s adulation during a surprise appearance at last Sunday’s NFL playoff game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Kansas City Chiefs, a lesser-known team was on hand to run a very different kind of play.
By the time the governor took his seat at Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium, video of his smile-and-wave routine—smoothly filmed in vertical mode, perfect for sharing—was already circulating online.
But the most important plank of DeSantis’ play was executed on a much different field: the arena of social media. Promptly after the clip was posted, right-wing Twitter accounts with thousands of followers amplified it and caused it to spread like wildfire among a DeSantis-loving audience. The clip would end up racking up over over 2 million views on Twitter.