Politico recently published a cache of internal Telegram messages shared over several months by leaders within the Young Republican National Federation and affiliated state organizations. The exchanges contained repeated racist, antisemitic, and homophobic slurs, alongside praise of Adolf Hitler and casual references to sexual assault and gas chambers. The speakers were not anonymous internet agitators. They included a sitting state senator, federal agency staff, legislative aides, and party organizers in their late twenties and thirties.
The initial reaction from many Republican officials was direct. The Young Republican National Federation stated that the messages were unbecoming of any Republican and called for members involved to resign. GOP leaders in Vermont urged State Senator Sam Douglass to step down. Party officials in Kansas issued statements distancing themselves from the rhetoric. Roger Stone, who rarely flinches at incendiary language, called the remarks indefensible.
Vice President JD Vance took a different position. Rather than joining the condemnations, he dismissed the outrage as “pearl clutching” from political opportunists and insisted that the participants were merely “kids” telling “stupid jokes” in private. He argued that lives should not be ruined over offensive humor and warned that Republicans were playing into their opponents’ hands by reacting too strongly. To support his stance, he pointed to a separate controversy involving Jay Jones, a Democratic candidate in Virginia whose private texts referenced “two bullets to the head” for a Republican lawmaker. Jones later issued a public apology, and several Virginia Democrats condemned his remarks at the time.
Vance used that incident as justification for withholding judgment toward his own party’s operatives. It was a clear instance of whataboutism, suggesting that accountability should be stalled until the opposing side meets some moral prerequisite. This approach is notable not only because it deflects responsibility but also because it contradicts Vance’s own past positions.
After the 2017 Charlottesville rally where a white supremacist killed counter-protester Heather Heyer, Donald Trump responded by saying there were “very fine people on both sides.” Many criticized him for drawing moral equivalence between neo-Nazis and those confronting them. At the time, Vance was among those urging a more principled response. He said that leaders had an obligation to name wrongdoing directly rather than dodge by pointing to misconduct elsewhere. He explicitly said whataboutism was “no defense.” His handling of the current controversy abandons that standard in favor of partisan relativism.
The individuals exposed in the Young Republican chat were not teenagers engaging in impulsive behavior. Public records place most between twenty-four and thirty-five. They hold positions in legislatures, political organizations, and government agencies. Their comments were not isolated lapses. They were part of a long-running pattern across nearly three thousand pages of conversation.
The broader issue raised by this incident concerns the Republican Party’s evolving stance on accountability. For years, many conservatives have decried “cancel culture,” arguing that society has become too quick to punish people for words said in anger or ignorance. Yet this case forces a question. If celebrating Hitler and calling sexual assault “epic” do not qualify as grounds for removal, then what is the threshold? At what point does resistance to overreaction become a refusal to confront overt extremism?
There was a time when Republican leaders drew clear boundaries. In the 1960s, Barry Goldwater rejected the conspiracy rhetoric of the John Birch Society even when it risked fracturing his base. After the September 11 attacks, George W. Bush spoke at a Washington mosque to affirm that American Muslims were not the enemy. These decisions were not made to appease critics. They were made to preserve credibility.
Today, the party is divided between those who still believe in drawing lines and those who believe that doing so is a sign of weakness. JD Vance has positioned himself firmly in the latter camp. By writing off adult political operatives as harmless youths and by labeling criticism as “pearl clutching,” he has signaled that partisan loyalty now outweighs moral consistency.
The messages speak for themselves. The real test is whether anyone in power still believes that speech of that nature warrants consequences, regardless of who said it.
—By Greg Collier
