GOP split over how to respond to racist texts

[Thiệu Ngô]

As the White House attempts to redirect focus to violent Democratic rhetoric, Republicans face the vexing choice of how to respond to a trove of hateful messages.

By Jason Beeferman

NEW YORK — When POLITICO approached Rep. Elise Stefanik this month with hate-filled messages from the same Young Republicans she backed and bankrolled for years, her condemnation was swift and full-throated.

Hours after the story published — and just minutes after Vice President JD Vance derided criticisms of the chat as “pearl clutching” — Stefanik pivoted to attacking Democrats. She derided POLITICO’s story as a “hit piece” and those across the aisle raising alarm about it as “hyperventilating.”

“These were not even candidates for elected office outside of internally in a young professional political organization,” Stefanik wrote on X, shortly after Vance’s post. “Meanwhile, the VA Democrat Attorney General candidate Jay Jones said he wanted to shoot his political opponent in the head and wanted their children to die in their mother’s arms. Democrats have refused to condemn this violent rhetoric and refused to call for him to exit the race.”

Stefanik’s shift reflects a broader dilemma Republicans across the country are now facing as they’re forced to confront a damaging situation: whether to denounce or deflect in their public messaging in response to a trove of private discussions Democrats say is proof of the GOP’s long-dismissed problem with white supremacy.

At the state and local level, Republicans are largely following a different track — even if it means bitter pushback from an online faction of right-wing youth who appear ascendant.

Vermont’s Republican governor and the state’s GOP House and Senate conferences acted in lockstep to condemn the messages and successfully pressured a state senator involved in the chat to resign. The Kansas GOP noted their state party is led by a Black woman and denounced the messages as inconsistent with their values. And New York’s GOP and state senate minority leader decried the messages, calling on fellow Republicans involved in the chat to step down. On Friday, New York’s state party leadership voted unanimously to disband the state’s Young Republicans group.

“Unlike the Democrat Party that embraces anti-Semitic rhetoric and refuses to condemn leaders who call for political violence, Republicans deliver accountability by immediately removing those who use this sort of rhetoric from the positions they hold,” New York GOP chairman Ed Cox said in a statement. “This incident was immediately condemned by our most senior New York Republican elected leaders.”

On the national level, Vance doubled down on his initial comments by attempting to draw more attention to texts from Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones, in which Jones talks about shooting his political opponent.

“A friend shared these truly disturbing messages from a Young Republican group chat,” the vice president wrote on X Thursday, sarcastically. “The group’s leader ‘genuinely’ calls for murdering the children of his political opponents. Oh wait, actually this is from Jay Jones, the Democrat running for Attorney General in Virginia.”

Rep. Mike Collins, a House Republican from Georgia, also seemed to think focusing on the Young Republicans’ group chat was misguided.

“I don’t care about some group chat,” he wrote in an online post which was accompanied by a picture of Laken Riley. Riley, a Georgia nursing student, was killed by an undocumented immigrant last year, and her murder has been used by the GOP as they argue for more stringent immigration policies.

Some members of the party have attempted to both condemn the chats and highlight violent Democratic rhetoric.

The Arizona Young Republicans, whose chairman was a member of the group chat examined by POLITICO, expressed disdain for fellow Republicans who acted swiftly to denounce the chats — but also expressed “regret” for the messages in the chat.

“While certain voices within our own movement have been quick to condemn, many of these same individuals have overlooked or ignored deeply concerning rhetoric and actions on the political left — including public celebrations of the tragic death of Charlie Kirk and Jay Jones, calling for the death of family,” the organization said. “We express our sincere regret and unequivocally condemn any rhetoric that could be interpreted as sympathetic to Nazi ideology.”

Vance and others in his party have long decried Democratic attempts to tie the GOP to Nazi Germany. During a speech on supporting law enforcement in North Carolina last month, he told supporters that Democrats should be blamed for political violence in this country.

“Political violence has gotten out of control in this country; we’ve got to stop it,” he said. “That starts unfortunately at the very top of the Democratic Party… If you want to stop political violence, stop telling your supporters that everybody who disagrees with you is a Nazi.”

In the Telegram chat obtained by POLITICO, the Young Republicans talk about how some in their party are drawn to Nazi ideology and speak about putting their opponents in gas chambers.

Some Republicans’ dismissal of Democratic-led outrage over the chat comes as New York Democrats have tried to capitalize on the chat’s hateful content by linking GOP battleground House candidates with the Young Republicans who wrote the messages.

Joe Pinion, a former New York GOP Senate candidate who served in leadership roles in both the New York State Young Republicans and the New York Young Republican Club, said Republicans nationally should be focused on the government shutdown and that the GOP doesn’t need to speak about the group chat, beyond making it clear its members don’t represent the Republican Party.
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“The group chat is disappointing, is disgusting, it is disheartening, but it is par for the course for Democrats to find something that they can point at and lay at the feet of their political opponents,” said Pinion.

Longtime Republican strategist Susan Del Percio — who has opposed President Donald Trump’s three presidential runs — said the contrasting GOP responses could have more to do with how Trump has influenced a new generation of Republicans than anything else.

“Those who are new to [GOP politics] have come up in the last 8,10 years seeing what Donald Trump has done, and how he in many ways gets away with his rhetoric and his taking down of people,” she said. “It’s lie, lie, deny. And in this case it should be: condemn everything.”

When reached for comment, the White House referred POLITICO to the vice president’s statements about the chat. A spokesperson also previously rejected the notion that Trump had anything to do with the incendiary rhetoric contained in the chats.