this almost certainly falls into a weird middle ground of "virtue signal that even he knows is not realistic, but which also speaks to the legitimate opinion of many Republican voters and elites probably including himself". DeSantis is many things--but ignorant is not one of them.
Oh he's definitely in the virtue signaling end of his business. He keeps pushing laws that he knows damn well are unconstitutional but they sure rile the base.
DeSantis is all about performance politics. He does things not because he thinks they are the right thing to do, but because he thinks the performance of him "hurting the right people" will get him more votes.
He doesn't even care if his laws are overturned later. He can either ignore that they were overturned or he can rail against "liberal activist judges" (even if the judge was appointed by Trump).