Mixed in with its recent layoffs, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign cut ties with Nate Hochman, the former National Review writer, who is now blamed for the online video that blasted President Donald Trump for his support of LGBTQ rights, according to a report by Dave Weigel and Shelby Talcott for Semafor.com.
Hochman left National Review in March for a position at the Florida Republican Party and then migrated to the governor’s campaign, where he was part of the rapid response team and worked with the DeSantis War Room social media team.
< a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/23/us/politics/desantis-campaign-reboot.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A source told The New York Times that the Trump-LGBTQ video, panned as both homophobic and homoerotic, was created by someone on the campaign staff, who then passed it to another account for posting. Then, the campaign retweeted the video–as if it had been found.
Hochman also retweeted another video, now-deleted from the DeSantis War Room account, that portrayed a “wojack” or “Feels Guy” character depressed about Trump but then getting excited about DeSantis with the Florida state seal transforming into an ancient symbol used by the Nazis, called a “sonnenrad,” wrote Weigel and Talcott.
Axios reported that Hochman actually created the sonnenrad video:
Nate Hochman, a speechwriter on the DeSantis campaign and a former writer for National Review, created the video on his own and shared it through a pro-DeSantis Twitter account, according to a person familiar with the matter.
On Saturday, @desantiscams, an anonymous pro-DeSantis account followed by several of his campaign aides, tweeted out a video bashing former President Trump for not building a border wall and for promoting the COVID-19 vaccine.
The video hyped up DeSantis to the tune of Kate Bush’s “Running up that Hill (A Deal with God),” and ended with an image of DeSantis in the center of Florida’s state seal — which then morphs into a rotating Sonnenrad.
The Anti-Defamation League has a description of the sonnenrad, which reads in part:
In Nazi Germany, the Nazi Party, the SA, and the SS all used sonnenrad symbology at times, which has led neo-Nazis and other modern white supremacists to adopt such images. One sonnenrad version, in particular, is popular among white supremacists: two concentric circles with crooked rays emanating from the inner circle to the outer circle. Often white supremacists will put another hate symbol, such as a swastika, in the center of the inner circle.
As of press time, Hochman’s Twitter profile still identifies him as a member of the DeSantis team with this quote: “Good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.”