DeSantis keeps failing the most basic test in politics: denouncing Nazis | Opinion

Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign recently fired a staffer who reportedly either retweeted or made a video that included Nazi imagery superimposed onto the Florida governor’s face.

Great. That’s a no-brainer. But where’s the denunciation — from a presidential candidate, no less — that surely should accompany that news? We’re still waiting.

It doesn’t matter much whether the staffer, former National Review writer Nate Hochman, made the video, as Axios reported, or just retweeted it on the @desantiscams account. DeSantis’ campaign obviously had to expel anyone pushing something so abhorrent.

In case you’re wondering, this was not a case where the imagery in the video is unclear or open to interpretation. This is awful stuff. The video, first reported by Semaphor, shows DeSantis in front of the Florida state seal that morphs into a red wheel, called a sonnenrad, a symbol that was used in Nazi Germany and, today, by neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Silhouetted soldiers march toward DeSantis on both sides.

Even when you know what’s coming, that spinning red wheel is jarring to see, instantly recognizable as a chilling Nazi symbol. So no, this wasn’t a close call.

Hochman’s departure came during a big reduction in presidential campaign staff as DeSantis struggles to regain his footing as the main challenger to Trump for the GOP nomination. Some media outlets reported that Hochman parted ways with the campaign over the video. The campaign told Axios that “Nate Hochman is no longer with the campaign. And we will not be commenting on him further.” There was no response from the campaign when the Editorial Board reached out.

In saner times, Hochman’s firing — if, as reported, that’s what happened — would be the end of the whole shocking thing: The campaign rightly booted someone who promoted ideas that are against everything this country stands for. He slipped through the cracks on vetting. The campaign, in normal political times, would express horror. Case closed.

Except this is the same DeSantis who has repeatedly failed to denounce, in strong and certain terms, the appearances of neo-Nazi demonstrators in his state. In Orlando last year, a group of about 20 people shouted antisemitic slurs while waving Nazi flags near a shopping plaza and then again on an Interstate 4 overpass.

And in Tampa last summer, neo-Nazis demonstrated at a major Republican conference, Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit. They waved flags emblazoned with swastikas and white-supremacist SS bolts, held up placards with anti-Semitic slurs and someone unfurled a “DeSantis Country” flag.

DeSantis’ pulse, apparently, has been barely raised by the reprehensible actions that have happened on his watch. After the I-4 demonstration, it took him days to respond, and then it was mostly to shrug off the behavior, calling the demonstrators “jackasses.” Then he tried to change the narrative: He went after Democrats for trying to “smear” him by asking about it.

We’re still waiting for the loud condemnation this time, too.

Democrats, of course, have seized on the video. Florida Democratic Party chief Nikki Fried said DeSantis has been “given every chance to denounce neo-Nazis and what they stand for, and he refuses to do it.”

More than that, DeSantis isn’t simply a governor anymore. He’s a serious presidential candidate with a shot at the Republican nomination for the White House. He should be on the record, with no equivocation and no weasel words, because it is beyond obvious: Nazis are bad.

What does it tell us that he’s not?