When GOP presidential hopeful Gov. Ron DeSantis fired a campaign staffer who posted a video with Nazi imagery in it, the media coverage fell into a predictable pattern: letting DeSantis off the hook. The staffer, Nate Hochman, had retweeted a video that celebrated DeSantis using Nazi imagery. Hochman denied knowing that the Sonnenrad symbol in the video was a popular alternative to the swastika that Nazis and neo-Nazis have long used. Because DeSantis let the staffer go, the media coverage implied that the campaign was unaware of the video or its meaning, and bore no responsibility for putting Nazi propaganda out there.
Further reporting, however, has since suggested that DeSantis' exonerating narrative is false. Hochman did not innocently retweet a video he happened to see online. As Axios swiftly reported, Hochman was actually the creator of the video, which he then tried to pass off as made by someone else. As the report also noted, Hochman was let go during a purge of about one-third of the staff to budget issues. Nor was it a one-off incident of DeSantis staff making incendiary videos in-house, and then using sockpuppet accounts to trick the press into believing they were fan-made content. The New York Times recently reported that a shockingly hateful video attacking LGBTQ people, which the campaign retweeted and pretended was made by a DeSantis supporter, was also made by campaign staff.
