Ron DeSantis has released an ad indoctrinating his children into Trumpism – but what does it say about the president’s popularity?

Ron DeSantis was trailing in the polls in the Republican primary for the governorship of Florida, according to one poll, by as much as 15 points. His main competitor, Adam Putnam, a rising star in Florida politics, had more local endorsements and had raised more money, $19.2m by April of this year.

Then came Donald Trump. On 22 June, Trump tweeted his endorsement of DeSantis, and the polls flipped almost overnight. Real Clear Politics now gives DeSantis around an 11-point lead.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Congressman Ron DeSantis, a top student at Yale and Harvard Law School, is running for Governor of the Great State of Florida. Ron is strong on Borders, tough on Crime & big on Cutting Taxes - Loves our Military & our Vets. He will be a Great Governor & has my full Endorsement!

Earlier this week Trump once again endorsed DeSantis, this time onstage with him at a rally in Tampa. DeSantis gave a fawning introduction to Trump in which he praised his leadership and policies.

But Trump’s support and the resulting turnaround in polling has left DeSantis with a new challenge: how do you build a whole gubernatorial campaign around basically one point – that you have the endorsement of the president?

The answer the campaign has come up with is to double down and then double down again. Trump is everywhere in DeSantis’s campaigning material, mentioned every other sentence in his speeches. The description text of his website, the bit that comes up in Google search results, simply reads: “Ron DeSantis if [sic] fully endorsed by President Donald Trump!”

It could be easy to mock DeSantis for his lapdog behaviour, but he’s done that already. In a new campaign ad he playfully jokes about the only thing to his candidacy is his close relationship with the president.

In the ad, DeSantis’s wife assures viewers that there’s more to the candidate than his close association with Trump – he plays with his children and teaches them to read. But in footage of the candidate with his kids, we see he’ is reading them The Art of the Deal and building a border wall out of toy bricks.

Humourous campaign ads have a tortured history. Many are so laboured that they make you want to wince, rather than laugh. Democrat Dan Helmer’s Top Gun parody, which aired during his congressional campaign, is common of the kind of awkward dad humour involved.

Yet DeSantis’s ad feels genuinely funny. The production values are high, the gag is relatively edgy: that he’s indoctrinating his young children into Trumpism. It’s not unlike the sort of skit you might see on John Oliver, or perhaps something Sacha Baron Cohen might trick a politician into on Who Is America?. Liberals might be unable to fathom how this could make voters more likely to vote for DeSantis, yet he clearly feels confident that he’s not the butt of the joke.

The ad serves as a reminder of Trump’s soaring approval ratings among Republican voters, and how difficult it will be for some Republican candidates to win races if they distance themselves from the White House.

DeSantis even seems well prepared for the backlash. He has come under some criticism for using his young children, but on Fox News he said such comments just show people have “no sense of humor” – a line that will surely further please a base that rails against political correctness.