Florida GOP Governor and struggling presidential contender Ron DeSantis is facing a call to resign from his executive position in Florida from a prominent online advocacy group after a campaign staffer of his promoted a pro-DeSantis video featuring Nazi symbolism.
It’s not particularly open-ended, either. The symbol displayed in the video is a Black Sun, which features a series of runes assembled roughly in the shape of a sun and that has consistently been used by real-world Nazis and Nazi-aligned groups. Luke Thompson, a journalist who caught the retweeted video before the original post was removed from the internet at its original source, did not identity the DeSantis campaign staffer who reposted it, though they were ID’ed elsewhere as Nate Hochman, who has previously engaged with the account that originally put up the video and who was previously taken onboard at the DeSantis team as a speechwriter for the presidential hopeful. (His Twitter bio has since been updated to identity him simply as “Team @RonDeSantis.”)
“Ron DeSantis not only should suspend his campaign — he should resign as governor,” MeidasTouch, the progressive advocacy group, insisted online. “All Republicans should immediately call on him to do so. Nazism has no place in the United States of America.”
Evident Nazis have previously associated themselves with the Florida governor. Last month, a small group appeared outside Walt Disney World in the Orlando area, displaying Nazi imagery — and support for DeSantis. A similar situation unfolded last year, when individuals touting both Nazi imagery and support of the governor appeared outside of a Florida convention center around the time of a conference where DeSantis spoke.
DeSantis since won another term as governor by a huge margin of nearly 20 percent over Democratic challenger Charlie Crist, but his campaign for president is faltering, with Donald Trump — no matter his multiple criminal cases — still way ahead of everyone else in polling from the Republican primary race. And there are a lot of others, for some reason, with Republican presidential campaigns having been announced by current and former governors, former officials in the Trump administration and Congress, and the former Secretary of State in Montana.
Ron DeSantis not only should suspend his campaign — he should resign as governor.
All Republicans should immediately call on him to do so.
Nazism has no place in the United States of America. https://t.co/SPS8QgsfRr
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) July 23, 2023
