Now-fired DeSantis staffer created Nazi-symbol video, reports say

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign fired a speechwriter who retweeted a video with a Nazi symbol superimposed over DeSantis’ face, according to reports.

But Axios reported that the now-former staffer, Nate Hochman, actually made the video himself.

Hochman “created the video on his own and shared it through a pro-DeSantis Twitter account,” Axios reported, referring to the DeSantisCams account.

The video ended with an image of silhouetted soldiers marching toward a giant, red sonnenrad, a wheeled symbol used by the SS in Nazi Germany and neo-Nazi groups today. DeSantis’ face and the Florida state flag were superimposed into the center of the sonnenrad wheel.

Hochman retweeted the video, but it was deleted shortly afterward and early reports could not initially confirm that a DeSantis staffer had boosted it.

The Florida Democratic Party seized on the issue, with chair Nikki Fried referring to recent neo-Nazi rallies in Florida and stating that DeSantis “has been given every chance to denounce neo-Nazis and what they stand for, and he refuses to do it.”

Asked about one such rally in Orlando last year, DeSantis lashed out at “Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to try to smear me.”

On Tuesday, the DeSantis campaign cut 38 staffers as part of an attempt to create a “leaner-meaner” organization, as the New York Times had previously reported. Hochman was reportedly one of the staffers, and NBC News and Semafor joined Axios in reporting he was fired in part over the video.

“Nate Hochman is no longer with the campaign,” the campaign told Axios. “And we will not be commenting on him further.”

The Orlando Sentinel had asked the campaign specifically about whether Hochman had retweeted the video on Monday, but spokespeople did not respond. The campaign did not respond to questions Tuesday about whether Hochman created the video and the express reasons for his firing.

Hochman, a former National Review writer, had already come under fire when first hired by the campaign for his previous praise of white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

“You’ve gotten a lot of kids ‘based’ and we respect that for sure,” Hochman told Fuentes in a Twitter Spaces event, according to The Bulwark. “’I literally said, ‘I think Nick’s probably a better influence than Ben Shapiro on young men who might otherwise be conservative.””

Hochman stated during the Spaces event that he agreed with Fuentes that “women are goofy … they should have no authority over men” and “just really have no business in politics,” The Bulwark reported.

Hochman, who had often boosted DeSantisCams videos, tweeted, “Which way, Western man?” in June in a post praising DeSantis and his family. “Which Way, Western Man?” is a 1978 book that purportedly promotes anti-Semitic and racist ideology.

An earlier controversial video shared by the campaign on Twitter, which seemingly criticized President Trump for saying he’d protect the LGBTQ community after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando and included bizarre images of burly men and a fictional serial killer, was also originally created by a DeSantis campaign staffer and passed off as outside work, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

DeSantis defended that video when asked about it earlier this month.

The similarities between the two videos led to speculation that the same person was behind them, according to Semafor.

The video that closed with the Nazi symbol featured similarly odd imagery, including women in bikinis, images of drag queens imposed over a headline of a Florida city canceling its Pride parade, and seemingly approving clips of headlines about how DeSantis was pushing Florida “much further right.”