Former DeSantis campaign staff member was fired for sharing a Nazi-linked video in 2023, then he rose to become Marco Rubio’s chief speechwriter

Nate Hochman found himself at the center of controversy in 2023 during Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign after circulating a promotional video that included an image later identified as one embraced by white supremacists. The backlash came quickly, and the campaign ultimately let Hochman go along with several other staff members.

Within a year, Hochman appeared in videos for America 2100, a right-wing advocacy organization connected to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. After that, he took a job with a Republican senator on Capitol Hill, The New York Times reports. 

He later moved into the State Department under Rubio. He now holds the post of deputy director in the department’s policy planning office. His email signature lists him as Rubio’s chief speechwriter as well. Hochman did not answer a request for comment. Spokesman Tommy Pigott said, “Nate Hochman is a trusted and key member of the department who has worked tirelessly to advance the president’s foreign policy agenda.”

Past disputes did not block later roles for several officials

The account described Hochman’s later appointments as part of a wider pattern. People who faced public controversy, including firings, still reached senior posts in the Trump administration, the reporting said.

Darren Beattie now works as a senior State Department adviser on Brazil policy. He lost a speechwriting job in the first Trump White House after speaking at a conference that white nationalists attended.

President Trump named Jeremy Carl, a commentator and Claremont Institute fellow, to a senior State Department job. Carl withdrew in March after senators asked him at a hearing about his comments on “white erasure.” He has also been accused of antisemitic remarks. Carl has said he is not a white nationalist.

Similar personnel choices appeared outside the State Department, the reporting said. Leaked chat logs from late last year showed Paul Ingrassia making racist remarks and saying he had a “Nazi streak in me.” He pulled out of a nomination to run the Office of Special Counsel. President Trump then named him deputy general counsel at the General Services Administration. He now serves there as acting general counsel.

Hochman finished at Colorado College in 2021 and soon drew notice on the right. He wrote for National Review, held a Claremont Institute fellowship, and published on The New York Times opinion pages. He later faced criticism after giving measured praise, in an online exchange, to white nationalist Nick Fuentes’s pull among young men. The Dispatch reported the exchange, and Hochman then lost a journalism fellowship.

He told Fuentes, “The fact that kids are listening to you, there are good things and bad things about it. But the fact that you have said super edgy things means that there’s a pretty strong ceiling to what you can accomplish in politics.” He later told The Dispatch that he rejected Fuentes’s worldview and had “said some really stupid things, which I don’t actually believe.”

Hochman joined DeSantis’s communications staff in 2023. In July he posted on X a video that contained a Sonnenrad, a circular emblem first popularized in Nazi Germany and later linked to white supremacy groups. The clip used a familiar meme character reading critical Trump headlines, then reading friendlier DeSantis coverage. It closed with DeSantis’s face placed on the Sonnenrad while soldiers marched by.

Hochman wrote in an essay the next year that he did not make the video. He rejected claims that an “ethnically Jewish kid with no prior video editing experience was cranking out neo-Nazi videos under the cover of night.” 

He was among the first to share the clip after it appeared on an anonymous X account used by campaign communications staff for memes and other posts. He wrote that he removed the share and told supervisors once he understood the symbol. He would not say who produced or posted the video, citing the “risk of throwing friends under the bus.”

America 2100 came next. Michael Needham founded the group after serving as Rubio’s Senate chief of staff and later working as a senior aide at the State Department and White House. For Rubio, the controversies don’t stop at his staff’s past, as he has also made policy shifts like rejoining a global vaccine program.   

Hochman appeared in 2100 videos from America, about Haitian arrivals there. In one clip, a resident said the number of Haitians had overwhelmed the sewer system. Hochman replied, “That’s gnarly,” then said, “The whole strip now basically just intermittently smells like human feces. Awesome.”

He later advised Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Missouri Republican, on policy. LegiStorm said he left that role earlier this year.  His work for Rubio comes as the senator reportedly controls Venezuela’s oil finances and cabinet picks from Washington.  Schmitt’s spokeswoman did not answer a request for comment. 

A federal database listed Hochman in June as a senior adviser in the counselor’s office. As deputy director of policy planning, he now works in a unit that advises the secretary on broad strategy. 

Records reviewed by The Times show that he has been writing speeches for Rubio since at least July, although it remains unclear which speeches he drafted. He has also shared posts from Rubio and the State Department with his roughly 70,000 followers on X, including claims linking Cuba to left-wing extremism. His X profile does not disclose his government position.