'Pearl-Clutching': JD Vance Shrugs Off Hitler-Loving Young Republicans' Leaked Texts

What a shocker.
'Pearl-Clutching': JD Vance Shrugs Off Hitler-Loving Young Republicans' Leaked Texts
Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC/license 2.0.
By Conover Kennard — October 16, 2025

Politico published the texts of Young Republican leaders, and they are exactly how you thought they'd be, calling Black people monkeys and “the watermelon people” and musing about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide, and so much more. The 2,900 leaked group chat messages reveal that the Young Republicans are Hitler stans, misogynists, racists, and violent bigots.

Vice President J.D. Vance used some bothsiderism to say the leaked text messages sent by Virginia Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones are “far worse” than the Young Republicans’ chat. Of course, two things can be bad at the same time, but Vance is a weak man and fell in line with his party, which, to me, suggests that he's OK with the anti-semitic, Hitler-loving Young Republicans. He did not call them out, but he did mention Jones's chat.

“This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia,” Vance wrote on the Bad App, and included a screenshot of Jones apparently admitting that he had hoped the former Republican Virginia House Speaker’s children would die.

“Yes, I told you this before,” Jones reportedly wrote in the chat. “Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”

“I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence,” he added.

Here are some of the texts:

As Roger Stone once said, "Young Republicans are a very, very important constituency. Along with little old ladies, they provide the foot soldiers for the Republican Party." Yeah, that. That's why Vance is shrugging off the texts spanning over seven months among Young Republican leaders in New York, Kansas, Arizona, and Vermont.

The mission of the Young Republicans states:

The Young Republicans are fighting for the future of the Republican Party. Together, our mission is to recruit new Young Republicans and engage young voters with the Republican Party, train the future leaders of the United States, and elect Republican candidates from the top to the bottom of the ballot across the country.

The Young Republicans are calling for the resignations of the leaders who wrote the appalling texts.

Sorry, guys, but we knew who you were before we read the texts.

Update: This is a doozy. Dave Edwards on Raw Story reports that Vance appeared on the Charlie Kirk Show and was asked about the Politico report.

"The stupid things that I did when I was a teenager and a young adult, they're not on the internet," Vance said. "Like, I'm going to tell my kids, especially my boys, don't put things on the internet. Like, be careful with what you post."

"If you put something in a group chat, assume that some scumbag is going to leak it in an effort to try to cause you harm or cause your family harm," he continued. "But the reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes."

"We're not going to allow the worst moment in a 21-year-old group chat to ruin a kid's life for the rest of time. That's just not okay," he added.

Gee, where have we heard that before? And they aren't "kids." Joe Maligno is a 35-year-old attorney. Annie KayKaty is 28. They are all adults.

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