Steve Bannon’s comment, which used the autism diagnosis to explain Ron DeSantis’ disastrous Twitter campaign rollout alongside Elon Musk, was echoed across the MAGA ecosystem. “Can we finally talk about this?” Grace Chong, the CFO of Bannon’s War Room podcast, called him “DeSpectrum” in one tweet, and in another one contrasted him unfavorably with the former president: “Trump does it BIGGER, BETTER, and with HEART. “Ron DeSantis is 100% on the spectrum,” tweeted the pro-Trump activist Laura Loomer. In short order, Bannon’s comment, which used the pseudo-diagnosis to explain DeSantis’ disastrous Twitter campaign rollout alongside Elon Musk, was echoed across the MAGA ecosystem.

“But if you want to delegitimize someone as a politician, certainly leaning into those stereotypes that people have about autistic folks is one way to do it. “It’s frankly none of our business until he tells us one way or the other,” she tells me. The implication is that the status of being on the spectrum is problematic or shameful or bad - and, at any rate, something intentionally kept secret. Rather, she’s troubled by the act of armchair diagnosis as a way of knocking someone. It’s not that Benham thinks such a diagnosis would be disqualifying. But she recently found herself in the somewhat surprising position of pushing back against an emerging line of attack against DeSantis, something that’s been trotted out by supporters of Donald Trump: The attempt to draw attention to DeSantis’ awkward public presence by claiming that the GOP presidential hopeful is “a little bit on the spectrum,” as Trump hatchet man Steve Bannon first put it last week.

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