How the Young Right Lost Its Mind

And why JD Vance keeps making it worse...

Since we have a lot of ground to cover, let’s catch up:

• The Pentagon goes dark.

  Via Status: “In less than 24 hours, the Pentagon is set to carry out an unprecedented expulsion of the press, stripping virtually all news organizations from their badges that grant them access to the building. The move comes after virtually all news organizations declined to agree to a set of new draconian rules that Pete Hegseth forced upon them as conditions for maintaining a press pass.”

• Gaza Ceasefire update. Via The Economist:

  Almost immediately, the ceasefire has brought the first alarming sign of how the broader peace deal might implode. Hamas fighters have emerged, armed and in uniform, to reassert themselves on the streets of Gaza city and Khan Younis. The benign explanation is that, in order to implement the first stage of the ceasefire, Hamas must be in control of parts of the cities so it can carry out the hostage release. But far from signalling magnanimous goodwill, Hamas has started settling scores, with killings and kidnappings of members of local clans which have tried to carve out their own fiefs.

• Meanwhile, back home: scenes from the “President of Peace"

Happy Wednesday.

The Young Bigots of the GOP

I really wish I could say that I was more shocked by this. But it is still gobsmacking. And, of course, JD Vance is making it even worse

Via Politico:

Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.

They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

These were not simply online randos. Some of the most prominent YR’s wallowed deeply in the gross bigotry.

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.”

Read the whole thing…HERE.

**

How should Republicans react? Panic would be a good start, followed by some very serious introspection. This is, of course, a sign of a deep rot on the Right — not just a generational and institutional failure, but evidence of a darker pathology that is not confined to a handful of depraved adolescents.

The kids are not all right, because the grownups are not all right.

Who, after all, are their role models? Who are the leaders and the stars of the Right today? So, this is less a revelation than a reminder that ideas have consequences, but so does a decade of feculent bigotry and crudity that comes straight from the very top.

David French found the explosion of bigotry among the YRs to be utterly unsurprising. “If you’re at all familiar with young MAGA culture,” he wrote, “this kind of conduct is common. It’s a matter of in-group signaling. You show your commitment to the cause in part through your disregard of basic decency and morality.”

To their credit, the national Young Republicans moved swifty to purge the bigots. Within hours of the Politico report, the YR board of directors issued a statement declaring that they were “appalled by the vile and inexcusable language revealed in the Politico article published today” and demanding that everyone involved “must immediately resign from all positions within their state and local Young Republican organizations.”

This morning, Politico is reporting that heads rolled quickly. “Former New York State Young Republicans Chair Peter Giunta and Joe Maligno, who previously identified himself as general counsel for the group, are both out…” which makes at least four YR officials who’ve lost their jobs.

Enter JD Vance... who is dismissing the whole controversy as “pearl clutching”.

Of course, the Vice President of the United States had no obligation to weigh into this mess at all. There are other matters — a Mideast peace deal, a government shutdown — that might have claimed his attention. He could have reaffirmed the GOP’s intolerance for hate. He could have backed the national YR group’s statement of disgust.

But, no.

Instead, Vance chose to wade into the swamp with a dose of hackish whataboutism, pointing to the controversy surrounding Virginia’s Democratic AG candidate Jay Jones who had mused about shooting a Republican colleague. (As Politico notes, “He did not explain why both sets of messages cannot be condemned.”)

In other words (as if this needed explanation), Vance is pointedly not joining the condemnation of the trolls who praised Hitler, described the NBA as “monkey play ball,” and blacks as “watermelon people”.

Reason’s Billy Binion noted: “People in those chats joked about how rape is ‘epic’ and called slavery ‘mega based.’ It would be great if the most powerful people had enough moral clarity to understand that two things can be bad at the same time. What a pathetic response.”

But there is a larger point here that we should not gloss over. Why did JD Vance weigh in?

Because he sees the online bigots not as a cause of outrage, but as a potential constituency, and Vance is determined not to be outflanked on the Right, no matter how vile or disgusting it is.

These, he calculates, are the people he will need in 2028.

So, he is signaling that he has their backs, that they can rely upon him. To denounce them risks losing an essential part of the base that will determine whether he becomes president or has to go back to Ohio and host a podcast.

Therein hangs an important clue: This is what the Vice President of the United States thinks about the state of his party and the dynamics of post-Trump Republican primary politics. And he may not be wrong.

The Resistance Rises

In the new Atlantic, David Brooks asks: Why hasn’t a resistance movement materialized here?”

Read the whole thing (Gift link): “America Needs a Mass Movement—Now”

The second Trump administration has flouted court decisions in a third of all rulings against it, according to The Washington Post. It operates as a national extortion racket, using federal power to control the inner workings of universities, law firms, and corporations. It has thoroughly politicized the Justice Department, launching a series of partisan investigations against its political foes. It has turned ICE into a massive paramilitary organization with apparently unconstrained powers. It has treated the Constitution with disdain, assaulted democratic norms and diminished democratic freedoms, and put military vehicles and soldiers on the streets of the capital. It embraces the optics of fascism, and flaunts its autocratic aspirations….

If you think Trumpism will simply end in three years, you are naive. Left unopposed, global populism of the sort Trumpism represents could dominate for a generation. This could be the rest of our lives, and our children’s, too.

So why are we doing so little? Are we just going to stand in passive witness to the degradation of our democracy?

Glad he asked this question, because there might, just might, be an answer:

No Kings

Find an event here.

Matt Lewis and I discussed it yesterday —>

Finally

America First! Argentina First!

Wednesday frog update

My wife is skeptical that the frogs are waving to me. But I’m sticking with my story. Just yesterday, when I walked in, the guys rushed to the window. I suspect they wanted to warn me about something. Or just wanted some bugs for lunch.