Ron DeSantis' White Boots — Ron DeSantis wearing tall white rubber boots and a blue campaign vest, shaking hands with a Florida sheriff's deputy on a street.

Ron DeSantis' White Boots

2022photoshop memeclassic

Published October 20, 2026

Ron DeSantis' White Boots is a photo of the Florida governor touring Hurricane Ian damage on October 2nd, 2022, while wearing conspicuously tall, pristine white rain boots. Twitter users zeroed in on the footwear within a day, and by October 3rd, 2022, photoshops comparing him to the Green M&M and Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders were pulling tens of thousands of likes4.

political satire memes photoshop memes viral photo memes fashion aesthetic memes backfire memes

Overview

Ron DeSantis' White Boots, also called Ron DeSantis' Go-Go Boots, centers on a single visual: the governor in a campaign vest and tall, bright white rubber boots that looked untouched by any mud at a Hurricane Ian site6. The humor hinges on the contrast between disaster-zone staging and footwear that reads closer to fashion runway than cleanup crew, which is why early tweets mocked the boots as impossibly clean3.

Most posts fell into two buckets. One was straight captioning of the untouched photo with jokes about his cleanliness or wardrobe choices2. The other was photoshop edits that cut DeSantis out of the storm footage and dropped him into unrelated contexts, from candy mascots to NFL cheerleader uniforms45.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter
Date
2022

On October 2nd, 2022, DeSantis appeared in a CNN segment touring the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in Florida, where cameras caught his tall white rain boots6. The earliest known tweet calling out the footwear came from user @jordanzakarin, who posted screenshots from the segment with a caption accusing DeSantis of holding up volunteers to pose in his "campaign vest and shrimping boots"1. That post picked up only about 70 likes over three days1.

About two hours later, on October 3rd, 2022, @NotHoodlum reposted the image with the caption, "This is what happens when you let Ted Cruz pick out your storm clothes," which drew roughly 6,500 likes2. Around the same time, @RonFilipkowski posted a close-up with the line, "Damn those things look nice and clean. Not a speck of mud on them," and hit about 22,300 likes in three days3.

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How It Spread

After @RonFilipkowski's and @NotHoodlum's tweets took off on October 3rd, 2022, the replies turned into a photoshop thread. The Lincoln Project's account posted an edit the same day pairing DeSantis with the Green M&M, which drew roughly 62,600 likes in three days4. Those early comparison edits set the template that others followed in the reply chains.

On October 5th, 2022, @Pleightx posted an edit that reskinned DeSantis as a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, which gained about 45,100 likes in a single day5. Know Your Meme documented the exploitable going into early October 2022 as the boots jumped from one-off jokes to a recurring photoshop format on Twitter6.

Timeline

2022-10-02

DeSantis tours Hurricane Ian damage on a CNN segment wearing the tall white rain boots that would become the meme[6].

2022-10-02

@jordanzakarin posts the earliest known tweet mocking the "shrimping boots" with screenshots from the CNN segment[1].

2022-10-03

@NotHoodlum tweets the Ted Cruz "storm clothes" joke and reaches about 6,500 likes in three days[2].

2022-10-03

@RonFilipkowski's "not a speck of mud" caption hits roughly 22,300 likes[3].

2022-10-03

The Lincoln Project posts a Green M&M comparison edit that draws about 62,600 likes in three days[4].

2022-10-05

@Pleightx posts a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader photoshop edit that gains roughly 45,100 likes in one day[5].

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How to Use This Meme

Posts typically start from the same source photo of DeSantis in the vest and white boots, then either add a caption pointing out how spotless the boots are or isolate him from the background for a photoshop swap. A common convention places him in costumes or settings where the boots fit the aesthetic, like the Green M&M's design or a cheerleader uniform, so the joke flips from "wrong boots for a hurricane" to "right boots for something ridiculous"45.

Frequently Asked Questions