Is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis trying to make himself artificially look taller by wearing height-boosting boots?
Intrepid Politico reporter Derek Guy this week talked with three footwear experts and they all agreed that DeSantis is wearing lifts.
Graham Ebner, an Austin, Texas-based cowboy bootmaker, tells Politico that he spots three giveaways in determining that DeSantis is likely wearing lifts: "The instep, the toe spring and where the ball of his foot is sitting in the boots."
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Ebner argues that the instep on DeSantis' boots appears particularly steep, and he says that "instead of the leather hugging the inside arch of his foot, as it should, it looks like his foot is being lifted up and stretching out the leather."
Zephan Parker, the bootmaker at the Houston, Texas-based Parker Boot Company, bluntly tells Politico that "[DeSantis] is wearing lifts; there’s no doubt."
Parker points to the size of the heels on DeSantis' boots as a dead giveaway that the Florida governor is wearing boosters.
Additionally, Parker sees something off with the boots' tops.
"Cowboy boots are made to fit snugly," explains Guy. "But such a snug fit leaves little room for a wedge-shaped lift, so people who wear lifts often have to size up in width. This increases all the other measurements in tandem, including the circumference of the tops."
The DeSantis campaign fired back at its reporting on the governor's footwear and said that "the governor doesn’t pad his boots, but if he ever needed anything to line a pet cage or fold up and wedge under a table leg, that would be the highest and best use for Politico Magazine."
