Marco Rubio’s mystery wordsmith unmasked: Aide axed over Nazi symbol video now pens US foreign policy

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is employing Nate Hochman, a former speechwriter for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who was dismissed in 2023 for resharing a video that included a symbol embraced by white supremacists.

Hochman now works as a senior Rubio aide as deputy director of the agency’s policy planning office and a chief speech writer for the secretary of state, despite the controversy over his prior online behavior.

At the time, Hochman was working for DeSantis when he was running his presidential campaign to challenge President Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination.

Hochman also participated in an online conversation with white nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes, telling him: ‘You’ve gotten a lot of kids based, and we respect that for sure.’ 

In the conversation, where audio was published by the anti-Trump outlet The Dispatch, Hochman warned Fuentes that his ‘super edgy’ remarks had imposed ‘a pretty strong ceiling’ on what he could accomplish in politics, while arguing he had no place in the conservative movement.

Hochman later said he had been trying to draw Fuentes out. ‘I said some really stupid things, which I don’t actually believe, that signaled agreement with Fuentes, even though I couldn’t disagree more with his vision of the world,’ he said.

The State Department is standing by him. 

‘Nate Hochman is a trusted and key member of the department who has worked tirelessly to advance the president’s foreign policy agenda,’ spokesman Tommy Pigott told the New York Times.

Hochman’s 2023 downfall came when he reshared a video showing a demoralized Trump-supporting meme figure being cheered up by headlines featuring DeSantis’ crackdowns on illegal immigration and ‘woke’ activists. 

It closed with the Florida state seal morphing into a Sonnenrad, or black sun, a design catalogued by the Anti-Defamation League as a neo-Nazi and white supremacist emblem.

Hochman denied creating the video, though he was among the first prominent DeSantis accounts to spread it. 

He deleted his repost once he learned what the symbol meant and said he had alerted his superiors. The coverage cost him his job anyway.

A New Republic article later revealed that individuals on the DeSantis campaign had created the video and planted it in a fan account.

Hochman, however, took the brunt of the public blame for resharing the video and was fired.

Despite the DeSantis controversy, Hochman found his way back into politics, first working for the conservative group America 2100 and then as a policy advisor for Missouri Republican Senator Eric Schmitt before taking a job with the State Department. 

Hochman first entered the conservative movement while working as a fellow for the Claremont Institute and writing as a fellow for the National Review.

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