Trump’s lapdog defends racist Young Republicans as “boys,” while some are almost his age—as they slur Indian women, like his wife, Usha, as “dirty.” How much did he get for his soul?
Vice President JD Vance at the White House.(Alex Wong / Getty Images)
At first I saw it as a “dog bites man” story. A posse of “young” Republicans (as old as 40) got caught by Politico on a 28,000-post text thread praising Hitler, threatening their (fellow Republican) enemies with “gas chambers” and “rape,” slurring Black people as monkeys and “watermelon people,” denouncing LGBTQ people as “fags” and worse, and also insulting Indian women as “dirty.” Are we really supposed to be surprised?
Politico reported the exchange “is part of a trove of Telegram chats…spanning more than seven months of messages among Young Republican leaders in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont.”
Surprisingly to me, a fair number of Republicans found it in their withered souls to denounce these ugly fools. A few of the guilty actually got fired. But someone who stuck up for them? Vice President JD Vance.
“The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys,” Vance said on The Charlie Kirk Show. “They tell edgy, offensive jokes. That’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke—telling a very offensive, stupid joke—is cause to ruin their lives.” Earlier he posted on X: “I refuse to join the pearl clutching.”
A couple of things, JD. They are not all, or even mostly, “kids.” You’re 41; the creepy Peter Giunta, who started the group chat to gin up support for his doomed bid to head the Young Republicans, is 31. An aide to New York Assemblyman Mike Reilly, Giunta got fired today. Giunta’s bid to run the Young Republicans was backed by Representative Elise Stefanik, MAGA weathervane, who is likely to challenge New York Governor Kathy Hochul, as well as the original Young Republican “ratfucker” Roger Stone. Other members of the chat are elected officials, or elevated staffers of elected officials.
Politico reports 251 of the texts in the group contained racial, ethnic, antisemitic, or gendered slurs, and/or threats of violence. These are not boys in the back of the schoolyard; these are men in positions of Republican Party power.
Politico, which will never be confused with The Nation, concluded: “Together, 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.” Indeed.
And Vance’s pardoning these angry, even violent slurs, as “jokes” goes as far as Trump himself ever has. He’s also ignoring an insult to Indian women, though that’s his wife, Usha’s identity.
Specifically, one of the creeps complained that a colleague was dating “a very obese Indian woman for a period of time.”
Giunta responded that the woman “was not Indian.”
“She just didn’t bathe often,” Samuel Douglass, Vermont state senator and the head of the state’s Young Republicans, interjected.
Between the reemergence of right-wing red-baiting and Donald Trump’s use of the chilling National Security Presidential Memorandum–7 to criminalize left political organizing, we’re seeing McCarthyism reborn before our eyes.
This assault on democracy cannot be ignored or wished away. Resisting it requires bravery in the face of threats and repression, a steadfast commitment to the truth, and the unwavering belief that we can—and will—overcome this darkness.
We must have an independent media that sets the record straight, unearths corruption and abuses of power, and advances a politics of justice and dignity for all if we’re to win this fight.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation
How are you, JD Vance, married to an Indian woman, insisting that’s just kid talk?
Because it’s not kid talk. It’s everyday talk in today’s Republican Party. Trump surfed this wave of bilge into the White House, twice. We’re soaking in it. Vance, desperately trying to inherit the MAGA mantle, doesn’t know he’s already drowned.
Joan WalshTwitterJoan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her most recent book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America.