Young Republican Leaders Exposed In Racist Group Chat

If someone were to tell you that the leaders of Young Republican groups across the country got exposed in a leaked Telegram chat as racists, antisemites, and all-around bigots, who fantasized about raping their political rivals, putting them in “gas chambers,” and/or driving them to suicide, while praising Republicans who support slavery because they hate “monkeys” and “watermelon people”?

What if someone were to tell you our nation’s top Republican officials, including Vice President JD Vance, have dismissed outrage over said Telegram chat as leftist “pearl clutching” after complaining for weeks about how “far-left” rhetoric has gotten out of control and is causing danger and division?

If your response to these scenarios is anything other than, “So, water is still wet then, huh?” — you simply haven’t been paying attention.

Earlier this week, Politico reported that it obtained some 2,900 pages of chats between leaders of Young Republican groups, the contents of which could have doubled as a correspondence between German Nazis and the American Klan members they stole their style from. The outlet noted that some commenters “worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked,” which proved to be a legitimate concern, because most people who are not named Kanye West would probably rather not have their “I love Hitler” declaration exposed for the world to see.

From Politico:

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n–ga” and “n–guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

Giunta was referring to an upcoming vote on whether he should become chair of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old.

“Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man. We only want true believers,” he continued.

“Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic,” Joe Maligno, who previously identified himself as the general counsel for the New York State Young Republicans, wrote back.

“I’m ready to watch people burn now,” Annie Kaykaty, New York’s national committee member, said.

The exchange is part of a trove of Telegram chats — obtained by Politico and spanning more than seven months of messages among Young Republican leaders in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont. The chat offers an unfiltered look at how a new generation of GOP activists talk when they think no one is listening.

Racial epithets, homophobic slurs, and otherwise bigoted comments appeared more than 251 times in the chat logs, and that’s in addition to the remarks about slavery, sexual violence, their hatred for Jewish people, and the coded language and slogans used by white supremacist groups.

And as much as MAGA supporters love to claim Black men have flocked to their party in droves to support President Donald Trump, they could not possibly have been present in these thousands of pages of chat logs, unless they have some kind of House negro fetish for being insulted by ‘massa.

More from Politico:

When Luke Mosiman, the chair of the Arizona Young Republicans, asked if the New Yorkers in the chat were watching an NBA playoff game, Giunta responded, “I’d go to the zoo if I wanted to watch monkey play ball.” Giunta elsewhere refers to Black people as “the watermelon people.”

Hendrix made a similar remark in July: “Bro is at a chicken restaurant ordering his food. Would he like some watermelon and kool aid with that?”

William Hendrix, who took part in that exchange, was a communications assistant for Kansas’ Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach, who isn’t the only Republican official who is connected to the chat, either directly or indirectly. Samuel Douglass, a state GOP senator from northern Vermont and the head of the state’s Young Republicans, was exposed as a participant in the bigoted Telegram discussions.

Predictably, this chat and the implications of the current state of the young MAGA world have not phased top Republican officials, who are doing their usual dance of downplay and denial.

On Tuesday, Vance tweeted screenshots purported to be from former Virginia state lawmaker Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee for state attorney general this year, who was recently implicated in a scandal regarding threatening texts he allegedly sent in 2022.

“This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia,” Vance wrote in a tweet accompanied by a screenshot of what must have been the more mundane parts of Jones’ alleged conversation, because they didn’t include explicit threats of violence at all. “I refuse to join the pearl-clutching when powerful people call for political violence.”

So, the vice president of these United States saw a thread full of violent, rapey, racist, antisemitic, slavery, and Holocaust celebrating comments, and his immediate response was vague whataboutism involving a Democrat.

Not that anyone should be surprised the guy who didn’t seem to care much when racists were coming for his Indian wife and children is the same guy dismissing outrage over nearly 3,000 pages of hate speech as “pearl clutching.” The man who led the charge in spreading propaganda about Haitian migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, — and spread the falsehood that Haitian migrants are responsible for a steep increase in HIV cases in Ohio — is probably too well-accustomed to amplifying his own hate speech to care about others.

Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson, told Politico that anyone who tries to tie the hateful group chat to the inflammatory rhetoric consistently used by the president is just being a desperate leftist, as opposed to a person who has the critical thought capacity to draw obvious parallels between the expressions of white nationalist Republicans and the white nationalist Republican who currently stinks up the Oval Office.

“Only an activist, left-wing reporter would desperately try to tie President Trump into a story about a random group chat he has no affiliation with, while failing to mention the dangerous smears coming from Democrat politicians who have fantasized about murdering their opponent and called Republicans Nazis and Fascists,” Huston said. “No one has been subjected to more vicious rhetoric and violence than President Trump and his supporters.”

Meanwhile, some of the Young Republican leaders exposed in the chat are calling the leak a targeted witch hunt (sound familiar?), but they’re also apologizing for it.

“These logs were sourced by way of extortion and provided to Politico by the very same people conspiring against me,” Giunta claimed. “What’s most disheartening is that, despite my unwavering support of President Trump since 2016, rogue members of his administration — including Gavin Wax — have participated in this conspiracy to ruin me publicly simply because I challenged them privately.”

Giunta also said:

“I am so sorry to those offended by the insensitive and inexcusable language found within the more than 28,000 messages of a private group chat that I created during my campaign to lead the Young Republicans. While I take complete responsibility, I have had no way of verifying their accuracy and am deeply concerned that the message logs in question may have been deceptively doctored.”

Walker, leader of the New York State Young Republicans, also claimed the chat “may have been altered, taken out of context, or otherwise manipulated” and that the “private exchanges were obtained and released in a way clearly intended to inflict harm,” but then he also apologized for the language he used in a chat he’s pretending to suspect was altered.

“There is no excuse for the language and tone in messages attributed to me. The language is wrong and hurtful, and I sincerely apologize,” Walker said. “This has been a painful lesson about judgment and trust, and I am committed to moving forward with greater care, respect, and accountability in everything I say and do.”

So much for racism and bigotry dying out with older generations. This is MAGA America, y’all. We’re dealing with a whole new generation of white supremacists who want to make America great again by turning the clock back and returning us to the time in history they’re currently trying to rewrite.

Sad.

SEE ALSO:

J.D. Vance Defends ‘Indian Hate’ Despite Family

Recapping All The Racism At The RNC

Study: Why White Republicans Still Support Trump After Jan. 6