Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has hired a new speechwriter with ties to a notorious neo-Nazi activist — much to the alarm of former Republican strategist Tim Miller, who laid out the implications in an article for The Bulwark on Friday.
"I perked up when I heard scuttlebutt a few weeks ago that Ron DeSantis had chosen a speechwriter not from the ranks of the GOP’s classically liberal old order, but from the brash online 'new right' that is more animated by culture wars and MAGA identity politics than by free markets and free people," wrote Tim Miller. Specifically, he hired Nate Hochman — "a conservative writer who has earned more ink by the age of 25 than anyone this side of Justin Bieber, has garnered a reputation as a young MAGA whisperer," and who has "found it necessary to cozy up to the movement’s gutter-dwelling racists in order to climb the ladder of influence."
"As first reported by the Dispatch last year, Hochman participated in a Twitter Space with white nationalist virgin Nick Fuentes — and lavishly praised him," wrote Miller. "'We were just talking about your influence and we were saying, like, you’ve gotten a lot of kids ‘based’ and we respect that for sure,' Hochman said. 'I literally said, I think Nick’s probably a better influence than Ben Shapiro on young men who might otherwise be conservative.'"
Hochman also stated during the Twitter Space that he agreed with Fuentes' claim that “women are goofy ... they should have no authority over men” and “just really have no business in politics.”
Fuentes is an avowed white supremacist and Holocaust denier who has praised Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and wants to turn America into a white and anti-Jewish ethnostate. He was recently placed on the "no fly" list after allegedly threatening to strangle a flight attendant.
Despite his history, Trump hosted him at Mar-a-Lago last year for a dinner meeting, alongside pro-Hitler rapper Kanye "Ye" West.
"This will be one of the defining questions of the DeSantis campaign: Will pre-MAGA Ron re-emerge and bring aboard the GOP old guard? Or will he keep leaning toward the groypers and Orbánists and culture warriors on the nationalist 'new right'?" concluded Miller. "The answer will depend on DeSantis himself — and on the staffers and advisers he chooses to surround himself with. Hochman’s hire is an early sign of which way it will go."
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