Young Republicans group chat: Why the racist, sexist, antisemitic messages matter.

The political consequences of the leak continue Young Republicans group chat. A Politico investigation found revealed that young GOP leaders from Arizona, Kansas, New York and Vermont sent each other thousands of Telegram messages containing racist, anti-Semitic and violent rhetoric.

The message's authors repeatedly used insults and profanities to describe blacks and other people of color, said “I love Hitler,” joked about putting their political opponents in gas chambers, and threatened rape and violence.

The Politico story, first reported last week, sparked debate among conservatives about whether blatantly bigoted language has become too normalized among young people on the right.

Some members of the chat were dismissed or resigned from their positions in the party. Democrats quickly condemned the messages, but the reaction from Republican pundits and politicians was divided: Some condemned the statements, others minimized and excused them or pointed to violent messages from the left.

Vice President JD Vance, in particular said he declined to “join the pearl grabbing” and referred to the chat participants as “kids” and “young boys,” even though the participants are in their 20s and 30s.

The young Republicans' leaked chat was tracked another leaked chat In it, Paul Ingrassia, President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, told a group of Republicans that he had “a Nazi streak,” that Martin Luther King Jr. Day should be “thrown into the seventh circle of hell,” and used an Italian slur for black people. On Tuesday, Ingrassia withdrew his nomination following those reports and after it became clear he would not have the support of several Republican senators.

Explained today Moderator Noel King spoke with us Jamie CohenAn associate professor of media studies at Queens College CUNY in New York who studies visual culture and online extremism explains why Republicans keep getting caught saying offensive things to each other even though they think no one else is listening.

Below is an excerpt from their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There's a lot more in the full podcast, so listen Explained today Wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, PandoraAnd Spotify.

Why do you think these young Republicans said what they said?

I think they have normalized this speech in their communities. This is sort of how we incorporate code switching into our group chats. Each of us has our own type of language when we speak to each other, and the websites and places we communicate through or find online speak this way. They just drag this type of language into their group chats.

This brings us to the question: If you think it's normal to talk like that, do you really mean it? And we're not in their heads; We don't know if they're really serious. But one way to find out if they're really serious is to ask: Does this only apply to young people on the right?

There is a space where people test the people around them by using language. The Overton window is the general threshold of acceptable speech. But I think that every person who espouses their ideologies – whether they are left-wing or right-wing ideologies – is testing people by using language that is quite specific to their space and their ideology. And that's why you often hear these words in these cases, to see whether someone is fighting back or not. And if no one objects, you know that this is an acceptable form of speech in these communities.

So it's not always ideological [exclusive] To the right; it is ideological [exclusive] to what an ingroup is or what you perceive as a sense of belonging. This way we test each other to find out.

Jay Jones, a Democrat running for attorney general in Virginia, it says in some texts which he apparently thought was private, that a former speaker of the House of Representatives in Virginia, a Republican, should receive two bullets in the head. He spoke about his rivals' children being killed by gun violence. What can we learn from Jay Jones' example?

So this example is interesting because the difference is that young Republicans are not running for office. [Editor’s note: One member of the group chat is a Vermont state senator.] You may hold positions in your state, but when you run for attorney general, you are really the person responsible for this kind of justice. There is the phrase: “Wisdom consists in anticipating consequences.” If you are running for this position, it is irresponsible not to be considered. [Jones] said he was embarrassed and sorry for what he said. But that is also vile speech and falls under what would be considered a threat, and that is not protected by our First Amendment rights.

What I hear from you is that everyone in the chats is behaving badly. And by “everyone,” I don’t mean literally “everyone,” of course, but I myself have said things in private group chats—nothing like that, I assure you and our listeners—that I don’t want anyone to see.

This makes me, Jamie, open to the idea that a group chat is essentially harmless. We talk like that in private, but we don't act on it. And we live in 2025. Everyone has a group chat and everyone is trying to impress their friends with the smart, salty, or spicy things they say. But we must remember that it is not real life. What do you think about it?

Over the last few years and probably the last decade, we have replaced community into these digital spaces. We can be freer in them. And I think, to be clear, if we lose that freedom, then we have also lost connectivity. We need the ability to express ourselves more freely in our group chats, in terms of private spaces, in terms of what we would call an in-group – and I mean a small in-group. What we would consider [our] The community should have the opportunity to have linguistic flexibility that is acceptable among friends. That's the way it is.

These gray areas are part of our moderation of the space in general. It is not a danger that is directly translated into action by the text. This is completely different. Turning the text into action takes many, many years. I think that's what happens, in my opinion, when you normalize any kind of slow violence – which is to say, they're just jokes at this point, when you normalize that in a group of friends.

[But] Sometimes the boundaries of your group chat extend into real life. You forget who you're talking to. You've normalized it so much in your head that your filters have worn out. And I think that's where the border areas become soft. And I'm worried about that in terms of internet culture in general, because so many people who think of themselves as extremely online or very online since the pandemic have lost the idea of ​​what the filter is between their online friends and the way they communicate with their parents, with their friends offline or, to be honest, in class. I've heard things come out of it [my students’] Mouths leading to a slightly red face. That's why I sometimes think that normality creates a random okay that isn't with the right in-group.

These were young Republicans who were leaders of the Young Republicans Kansas City And new York. If you look at their online profiles, you can see that they are not particularly charismatic people. They don't seem to be aiming for great things. And maybe – and we've heard conservatives make this argument – these are people at the lower level who didn't really want to go anywhere, and so there's not as much cause for concern. What do you think about it?

I would ask where JD Vance was in the rankings 10 years ago. If you assume that a decade ago he was in the lower echelons of politics – when he landed a book deal and told his story, and 10 years ago today pretty anti-Trump – and then he gets to a point where he uses Twitter and his accounts quite aggressively today with his language. And clean [his] In defense of these text messages, it just tells you that they may be at a lower level at this point in their speech, but it's likely that they may be ascending to the vice presidency or the presidency itself.

Vance is a fascinating case because he is young. He is a millennial. He is a member of the emo community. He will almost certainly run for president in 2028, and he is defending it. This man, who is very ambitious and probably wants to be president one day, is the loudest voice saying: That's not a big deal. This is really striking. What do we take from this?

I guess it surprised me the most when I was vice president replied in a quote tweet to the Krassensteins: “I don’t give a fuck what you call it,” as the Krassensteins called the Trump administration’s bombing of a Venezuelan boat a “war crime.” The Vice President is a very online character, but the Krassensteins are known as answer types to X, and they clap back. That is their main goal. They go directly to politicians and try to get that kind of attention. So they are popular characters.

I thought to myself: In what part of history, at least modern history, would you hear a vice president say something like that to a citizen? That would be a faux pas or something that would be very problematic. I mean, I grew up listening to Dan Quayle misspelled potato. I was fascinated by the level of aggressive ridicule that occurs when someone simply says something on Twitter or on

I think that when Vance talks about this or represents these young Republicans – I feel like that's what he's talking about in a lot of ways the future of the party that he is likely to inherit or imagines doing so. And in this way, we're sort of seeing what the new baseline is at the bottom, the normality of this lower level as it's going to get a little bit more aggressive going forward. People still see the Internet as a different place. But JD Vance and this chat group show that the Internet is everywhere. Internet culture is currently determining our politics and our culture. And we really need to pay close attention to how JD Vance speaks, because he may be speaking to his echo chamber, but he expects that chamber to be much larger and encompass everything around us.