A bombshell Politico report published Tuesday, culled from 2,900 pages of Telegram messages, laid bare the spine-curling racism, antisemitism, misogyny and other bigotry that’s just casual conversation among leaders of Young Republican groups from various states. “They referred to Black people as monkeys and ‘the watermelon people’ and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery,” Politico helpfully summarized.
In pre-Trump America, this would have been met by near-universal opprobrium among GOP leadership and the conservative commentariat. But this is Trump’s America, and while many right-leaning pundits and politicians are eager to change the subject, Trump’s vice president wasn’t about to be bullied into unequivocally denouncing racism among the future leadership of his party.
“Grow up! Focus on the real issues. Don’t focus on what kids say in group chats. … The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys — they tell edgy, offensive jokes. That’s what kids do,” Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday on “The Charlie Kirk Show.”
It’s been quite a week for undeniable Republican gutter racism. And, as Vance’s comments attest, what’s arguably most disturbing about it is how mainstream, established and non-fringe within the MAGA movement it is — even at a time when the conservative-leaning Supreme Court appears to be entertaining the idea that racism is over and there’s no need for quaint Civil Rights Era reforms like the Voting Rights Act.
As Mother Jones’ Julianne McShane reported after Vance’s remarks, the messages exposed by Politico weren’t shared among college kids. They all appear to be adults, some of them with impressive professional credentials. McShane was able to determine the ages of eight of the 11 participants, whose ages ranged from 24 to 35.
Vice President Vance, who is 41, is only six years older than the oldest member of the chat. One of them had been general counsel for the Young Republicans of New York, who said “I am so sorry to those offended” by the messages but also claimed they were “sourced by way of extortion” by rivals of his in a “highly-coordinated year-long character assassination.” Another member of the chat is a Vermont state senator — who later apologized “so deeply to my constituents and colleagues that our county and state have been dragged into this,” while also claiming to have been unaware of the “disgusting comments.”
Politico noted that “the messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric circulate freely — and where the Trump-era loosening of political norms has made such talk feel less taboo among those positioning themselves as the party’s next leaders.”
The sorry episode reminds me of an article I wrote in August 2023 titled “The Right Needs to Ask: ‘Why Do These Racists Keep Getting Hired by Us?’” Its focus was on the racist and antisemitic stylings of several young, rising stars in right-wing media. I argued that leaders in right-of-center media and politics ought to engage in some soul-searching about why they kept promoting as future leaders so many people whose bigotry was barely concealed.
Not to be cynical, but I predicted no such soul-searching would take place and also that being outed for their bigotry wouldn’t permanently kill the political careers of these particular young right-wingers — and I was correct.
Richard Hanania, who previously wrote pseudonymously for Richard Spencer’s notorious alt-right blog, is now considered a serious right-of-center political commentator. (Hanania disavowed his past alt-right writings after they were exposed — he also wrote an essay for The Free Press downplaying MAGA figures’ use of the Hitler salute earlier this year.) And Nate Hochman, who was fired from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign for including a Nazi symbol in a campaign video, now works for Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., according to Legistorm.
While some Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, roundly condemned the racist messages, some other conservative figures joined the vice president in leaping to the defense of the racist, adult Young Republicans outed this week.
Mike Davis, the influential MAGA lawyer and strategist — who previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch — called House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., “George Soros’ house slave” Tuesday. He was responding to Jeffries’ X post denouncing the racist Young Republicans. And because it’s not a trend without a third example, also this week a swastika-adorned American flag was seen in the office of Rep. Dave Taylor, R-Ohio. (He pleaded ignorance to its presence but condemned the flag once it was pointed out.)
The revelation that well-connected young Republican leaders in private conversations talk like Nazis isn’t one that MAGA-friendly influencers and pundits are particularly keen to address. It’s similar to how they’ve created the ridiculous term “the woke right” to label the bigots with whom they once made common cause in the war on so-called wokeness — but whose criticism of Israel is increasingly buttressed with overt antisemitism.
For example, MAGA podcaster and media mogul Ben Shapiro recently lamented to The Jerusalem Post, “There is a part of the Right that is extraordinarily conspiratorial and sees Jews as a conspiratorial force,” but for years The Daily Wire (the site co-founded by Shapiro) platformed “The Candace Owens Show,” whose host regularly spouted unhinged conspiracy theories and other extreme rhetoric. That ended in 2024, when Owens got a little too overtly antisemitic for her bosses’ tastes — like defending Kanye West’s praise of Hitler and musing about a “ring” of “sinister” Hollywood Jews.
Similarly, Shapiro has been in an open feud with Tucker Carlson over his criticism of Israel and increasing use of seemingly antisemitic tropes — such as insinuations that Jews killed Jesus, are more loyal to Israel than America and are world-controlling puppet-master bankers. But back when Carlson was merely fomenting hatred by saying things like immigrants make America “dirtier,” Shapiro had him sit for a friendly interview on his podcast.
Just as it’s easier to wave off the adult Young Republican leaders’ shocking racism as “kids will be kids,” it’s simply easier — if cowardly — for mainstream conservatives to deny they made common cause with bigots until they got a little too honest about their antisemitism. And it’s easier to conflate their antisemitism with the illiberalism of “woke” leftists, rather than admit they disastrously misjudged the character of their erstwhile right-wing allies.
It seems tragically fitting that Young Republican leaders have been unmasked as gutter racists the same week the conservative-leaning Supreme Court seemed to indicate it will chip away the last vestiges of the Voting Rights Act, allowing Southern red-state Republicans to gerrymander minority-majority districts out of existence and flip perhaps a dozen seats from Democratic to Republican. As my colleague Jordan Rubin put: “The high court majority’s discomfort with race carried into Wednesday’s hearing. There was a tone of: Can we just be done with all this race stuff already?”
The bottom line is that racism is part and parcel of the MAGA movement. This is not to say that every Trump voter, supporter or sympathizer is racist. It is only to say what should be plainly obvious — that over the past decade Trump has fully normalized the open expressions of rank bigotry that would have made Archie Bunker blush a half-century ago. And too many leaders in the MAGA movement, and their fellow travelers, continue to deny the normalization of racism poses an existential threat to the America they claim to love.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
