Ron DeSantis' Most Unsettling Habit Resurfaces During Debate

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis broke out his now-trademark smile during Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate.

And it went over about as well as his past attempts at flashing his pearly whites.

DeSantis went viral during the first debate over the summer with his awkward attempt to smile, then again this week when his smile included an odd flash of tongue during a TV interview.

On Wednesday night, he started with the tongue version, then seemed to catch himself:

DeSantis closes with an awkward tongue-exposing smile pic.twitter.com/fyVimwa2UP
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 9, 2023

DeSantis’ smile has been coming under extra scrutiny in recent days.

″[W]hen you have to take actual laughing lessons and you have to practice smiling, it’s a problem,” Washington Times opinion editor Charles Hurt wrote this week in a column about DeSantis’ struggle to connect with voters.

“Someone needs to tell DeSantis that no smile is better than a fake smile,” the National Review’s Rich Lowry wrote on the magazine’s debate liveblog.

DeSantis’ critics on X joined the smile pile-on:

I still don't understand how Ron DeSantis got this far without any of the necessary skills of a decent politician. At the very least a candidate should be able to smile in a way that doesn't look like a health crisis.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) November 9, 2023

“YES. THIS IS WHAT A HUMAN SMILE LOOKS LIKE.” -Ron DeSantis #RepublicanDebate #RonDeSantis #Homelander pic.twitter.com/s8h3eeHZG8
— Chaotic Good (@ChaoticGood42_) November 9, 2023

DeSantis would be better off giving up on trying to master a natural-looking human smile & just go 24/7 with his resting b*tch face. pic.twitter.com/BQcFBmtWRX
— Osborne Cox (@Osborne__Cox) November 9, 2023

What is up with the tongue smile attempt thing DeSantis keeps doing
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) November 9, 2023

Yeah, that was weird. He was doing well enough with that closing and then a chip in his head said SMILE and the gears jammed up https://t.co/VKdfKtjUXg
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) November 9, 2023

Desantis: “…and I will not let you down”

*licks teeth with awkward serial killer smile*
— Ramp Capital (@RampCapitalLLC) November 9, 2023

If DeSantis has a smile coach they need to be fired. If he doesn’t have one, it was a giant mistake 😂. He seriously reminds me of a kindergartener smiling for their first school picture. pic.twitter.com/7XiwEgyixk
— Geoff 🗽🇺🇸⚖️🏳️🌈🗽 (@GeoffBrown82) November 9, 2023

Ron DeSantis closed out the debate by showing America he’s still unable to smile like a normal person: pic.twitter.com/T9xyyLa8QM
— PocketCast News (@PocketCastNews) November 9, 2023