Welcome listener to the 228th premium chapter of the QAA podcast The Hearts of Iron

Episode. As always we are your host, Jake Bracketansky. Live Edgar, Julian Fields, and Travis

View. In July of this year, many were shocked after an official campaign Twitter account

for a public and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis retweeted a meme edit made by a supporter

that depicted the candidate standing in front of a spinning son and rat, a symbol originally

created by Himmler for the SS, and frequently used by neo-nazis. The video in its entirety

is a discordant array of meme references which are rather hard to decipher by themselves,

with the Kate Bush song playing in the background, a depressed-looking Wojak and a dimly lit room

reads news headlines talking about Trump's political failures. A door then opens behind him,

and the room is filled with light as he looks in awe at DeSantis's glowing silhouette.

Oh, who could forget that beautiful silhouette?

What follows is a confusing compilation of footage of rockets launching off into space,

the role of Miami residents hanging out at the beach, and headlines describing DeSantis successfully

deporting immigrants and cracking down on LGBT rights. Without any context related to the bizarre

internet subculture where this meme originated, it almost feels schizophrenic, and the icing on the

cake of discordant references, the spinning son and rat behind DeSantis at the end, makes it hard

for me to imagine how anyone working on a real American politicians campaign could think this video

would work as a means to convey DeSantis's supposed superiority to Trump.

Yeah, he like walked into like his son's sleepover, and they were all just like vaping and playing

video games that Ron didn't understand, and he's like, you guys, you guys do the comms. You guys

handle it. But there's one missing thread to this story that in its own way contextualizes what's

going on here. Well, maybe besides explaining why the DeSantis campaign thought retreating the

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