Presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis has been ridiculed for a seemingly photoshopped campaign photograph that has resurfaced as the Republican presidential primary begins to take shape.
The image was taken for Mr DeSantis’s brief campaign for Senate in 2015 ahead of the 2016 election when incumbent Florida Senator Marco Rubio was running for president before campaigning for re-election to the upper chamber.
A Flickr account called “DeSantis for Senate” has a small number of images publically available showing Mr DeSantis speaking to voters as well as the image of Mr DeSantis walking on the beach alongside his wife.
Some users photoshopped the couple onto different backgrounds and others compared the lack of footprints in the sand to the “two sets of footprints” fable in which Jesus picks a man up and carries him.
Mr DeSantis was branded a “plastic” politician during his early pre-campaign trail endeavours when he was essentially campaigning without having declared his intention to make a White House run.
“It’s just an example of another plastic politician who’s beholden to his donor masters that’s running around the country pretending like he’s governing in the State of Florida while actually, we all know he is running a Presidential campaign,” Presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy said before Mr DeSantis confirmed his presidential bid.
His actions also drew the ire of former president Donald Trump, who previously described his now closest rival for the Republican ticket as “disloyal” for considering a run.
Mr DeSantis originally posted the image to his personal Twitter account in 2015 along with a quote from his wife, calling him a man of “integrity and honor”.
After it resurfaced amidst his campaign for president, Twitter users mocked the photo for supposedly being edited.
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo tweeted: “Oh dear here’s man of integrity meatball Ron standing with his wife in a studio in front of a beach poster (hat tip to @patriottakes). Ron is so unwoke he doesn’t leave footprints. Literally.
“In fairness, I think it’s possible that Ron is the type of guy who breaks out in hives when exposed to the sun or sand or people having fun. But he still declines to release a letter from his paediatrician to clarify this.
“I didn’t notice this at first but if you look at MB’s left hand his fingers may be even shorter and stubbier than Trump’s. possible he had some sort of surgical finger shortening procedure to be more similar.”
“I didn’t know it was possible to make a beach photo shoot creepy, but Ron DeSantis managed to do it. Is anything real about this man?” Leah McElrath tweeted.
