On Tuesday evening, with her husband on the brink of entering the presidential campaign, Florida first lady Casey DeSantis tweeted a campaign-style video of Gov Ron DeSantis walking toward an American flag and captioned it with the words “America is worth the fight... Every. Single. Time.”
The video served as a teaser for Mr DeSantis’ campaign announcement. But the placement of the flag in it triggered discussion online about flag etiquette and American vexillological history that left one aide to Mr DeSantis open to mockery for gaps in her knowledge.
On Wednesday afternoon, Mr DeSantis filed paperwork declaring his candidacy.
After Ms DeSantis tweeted the campaign-style video, Donald Trump adviser and veteran Chris LaCivita tweeted “That she is. In the future maybe if you use [the flag] as a backdrop…have it positioned correctly.”
Mr LaCivita appeared to be taking issue with the fact that the stars on the flag in the video were in the top right corner instead of the top left corner and included an image of the flag with 15 stars that is said to have inspired the Star-Spangled Banner.
Mr LaCivita’s critique, for some, was undercut by the fact that Mr DeSantis was standing behind the flag in the video, meaning the flag was positioned correctly for the audience facing it from the front. This was not lost on Christina Pushaw, a campaign aide to Mr DeSantis.
“The flag is in fact positioned correctly, considering that he is standing back stage in this shot,” Ms Pushaw wrote in response to Mr LaCivita. “Now I am curious about the meaning of this 15 star and 15 stripe flag. Never seen it before. Does Liberia now have 14 colonies?”
Ms Pushaw’s apparent lack of familiarity with the flag that inspired the Star-Spangled Banner was pointed out by a number of Twitter users.
The flag of Liberia, meanwhile, is modeled on the US flag but has just one star representing its status as the first independent republic on the African continent instead of numerous stars representing the different US states. Liberia declared its independence in the middle of the nineteenth century by a collection of people including formerly enslaved people from the US and Carribbean.
The Independent has reached out to Mr DeSantis’ campaign for comment.
