The Ron DeSantis campaign has fired an aide who created a pro-DeSantis ad that used imagery associated with Nazis. Axios reports that speechwriter Nate Hochman secretly created the 68-second video on his own and shared it on a pro-DeSantis Twitter account. The video shows the "Wojak" meme—described by the Guardian as a "sad-looking man popular on the right"—looking miserable about headlines on Trump policies and then cheering up at DeSantis headlines. At the end, lines of soldiers are seen marching into a Florida state seal, which morphs into a spinning Sonnenrad, or sun-wheel.
The Anti-Defamation League describes the Sonnenrad as an ancient European symbol "appropriated by the Nazis in their attempt to invent an idealized 'Aryan/Norse' heritage," the BBC reports. The tweet with the video was deleted after people drew attention to the image, but a copy can be seen here. Hochman, a 25-year-old who writes for National Review, was among multiple DeSantis staffers let go this week, Semafor reports. It's not clear whether the firing was connected to the video. "Nate Hochman is no longer with the campaign. And we will not be commenting on him further," the campaign said in a statement. (More Ron DeSantis 2024 stories.)
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