The Young Republicans Are Still “Our Guys”

The only surprise to me in this episode is how quickly the national organization moved to breach that bargain, and even that isn’t all that surprising if you understand how the Trump-era Republican Party works.

Certainly, the content of the texts was no surprise. “If you’re at all familiar with young MAGA culture, this kind of conduct is common,” David French noted. “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.”

Vice-signaling, one might call it. “The views expressed were particularly vile. But they weren’t out of step with the broad strokes of public MAGA discourse,” Andrew Egger observed at The Bulwark. “Instead, they seemed to exist where a lot of young Republicans are today: at the nexus of the coarse and cruel public discourse modeled by Donald Trump and his movement and the maximum-shock style common among the young and Extremely Online.”

That last part is important. The GOP’s political culture has become so heavily influenced by Very Online culture, even at the highest levels of government, that it’s hard to imagine someone who isn’t already a seasoned edgelord going to work for a group like the Young Republicans. Go figure that such people would revert to form when chatting with each other.

Younger right-wingers “prize two things that are in conflict,” Egger went on to say, “absolute conformity to Donald Trump and his project, and an absolute rejection of the idea that you are conforming to other people’s political standards at all.” The same is true of all aspects of adolescent culture, though, of which Very Online political discourse is a conspicuous part. Rebellious children are notoriously conformist and transgressive, brattily flouting the norms followed by those outside their in-group while ruthlessly enforcing the norms of the group on fellow members. That’s MAGA all over.

How many young Republican voters, especially men, talk the same way among themselves as those in the group chat did is anyone’s guess. But if French, Egger, and I are right that this is a problem of broader right-wing political culture, not the specific institutional culture of Young Republican chapters, then texts like those are a lot more common among the rank and file than any of us would care to know.

That being so, you might think the national organization would have hesitated before cracking down on the malefactors in this case, not wanting to alienate the base by signaling its own allegiance to staid establishment out-group norms such as “you shouldn’t call your opponents ‘f-ggots.’” Its denunciation felt very, well, 2014. But it also made a degree of sense: Never forget that “respectable” Republicans play a critical part in the GOP coalition, even now.

Anyone who’s still voting for this rotten party in 2025 is morally committed to finding excuses for everything it does, if only on “lesser of two evils” grounds. But not all Republican voters are comfortable with that; they pride themselves on being decent people and need reassurance that the fascist organization with which they’re allied remains decent enough to accommodate folks like them.

The national Young Republican organization supplied that reassurance yesterday. The leader of the party pointedly did not comment, remaining silent about the group chat. His second-in-command, whom we’ll get to in a moment, did weigh in—and made excuses for what was said. A prominent voice in the populist influencer class actually complained that the authors of the texts were punished. But the national organization papered over all of it by denouncing what was said. And so, for respectable Republican voters, all is well.

The denunciation provided the same service that anti-anti-Trump conservatives provide in right-wing commentary and that Fox News provides in a populist media ecosystem that’s tilting toward the likes of Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens. It soothes anxious Republicans by letting them believe that the adults, not the inmates, are still in charge of the asylum in which they’ve chosen to reside.

Which brings us back to the second-in-command.

The rawest part of the raw deal that the Young Republicans in the group chat got was finding out, quite unexpectedly, that sometimes in Donald Trump’s movement there are enemies to the right.

Trumpism is tribalism, or at least it’s supposed to be. In a tribalist party there’s never a good excuse for confronting allies, no matter how poisonous to America their beliefs might be. Listen to formerly respectable Republican Megyn Kelly explain last month why she won’t condemn Owens and Tucker Carlson for their conspicuous turn towards antisemitism. “No, I have no obligation to ‘separate’ myself from anyone,” she told one fan on Twitter. “He’s a close friend and she is under enough pressure w/o gratuitous shots from me. My fight is with the left, not these two.”

Her fight is with the left. If you’re willing to passively mainstream Jew-baiting in your ranks in the name of owning the libs, you’re not a member of a political party, you’re a member of a tribe.

Or listen to the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who was aggrieved yesterday after some GOPers condemned the Politico texts. “The Right doesn’t stick together,” he grumbled. “That’s our biggest problem by far. Conservatives are quick to denounce each other, jump on dogpiles, disavow, attack their allies…. The Left will keep up the united front and defend their guys no matter what while we keep throwing each other to the wolves at every opportunity.”

Personally, I wouldn’t say that a movement that’s functioned more like a religious cult than a political party since 2015 has a problem “sticking together.” Nor am I moved by crocodile tears about Republicans attacking other Republicans when the biggest culprit in the GOP on that point, by leaps and bounds, is the cult leader himself. But you don’t need to agree with Walsh to grasp his point: There are “their guys” and there are our guys, and our guys—or “our people,” as he tribalistically put it in a different tweet—should be off-limits to attacks.

The vice president and presumptive party nominee in 2028 appears to agree.

J.D. Vance has zero tolerance for irresponsible rhetoric … when it comes from the other tribe. “Call their employer,” he said last month of random leftists celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder. “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.” And that’s true: Donald Trump’s running mate does believe in civility—on the left, towards the right.

When right-wingers get caught posting things that might delicately be called “uncivil,” however, Vance has a remarkable capacity for forgiveness.

Earlier this year, a member of Elon Musk’s DOGE staff was identified as the author of numerous online posts like “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” “I just want a eugenic immigration policy, is that too much to ask,” and “Normalize Indian hate.” Not only was the vice president (whose wife is Indian American) unperturbed by that lack of civility, he called for un-firing the newly fired staffer.

“I obviously disagree with some of [the] posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” Vance said. (The “kid” was in his mid-20s when he wrote the posts.) “We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back.” He was, in fact, brought back.

Yesterday, as the Politico story circulated, the VP once again demonstrated his big heart for racists in his tribe. Pointing to the infamous texts sent by Democratic Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones in 2022, he tweeted, “This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia. I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence.”

Vance’s logic, like his moral corruption, is consistent. In situations where your own tribe has sinned, the greater sin is to admit it and in so doing hand the enemy tribe of journalists and Democrats a victory.

And we all understand why Vance feels that way, I presume. If he’s going to lead his party in 2028, he’ll need the support of the untold numbers of young right-wingers across America who talk the same way the chuds in the group chat do. J.D. understands the tacit bargain of modern Republicanism and is pledging, indirectly, to uphold it once he’s in charge. He’ll never turn on you for exercising your Trump-given right to call liberals “f-ggots.”

So if it makes you feel better to know that a meaningless group like the national Young Republican board of directors denounced the texts, good for you. The person who’s poised to inherit the MAGA movement emphatically does not denounce them, and was so keen yesterday to make sure that everyone on Twitter understood it that he felt obliged to defend the texters unbidden.

This episode is useful in understanding the stakes of the Republican civil war that’s brewing in 2028. That war will answer a simple question: Who should and shouldn’t properly be considered part of the Republican tribe in a post-Trump universe?

In a political party, that answer is straightforward. All members are “our guys.” But in a tribe, especially one with a strong blood-and-soil strain like the postliberal GOP, “our guys” is a stickier concept.

It came up on Tuesday after Walsh tweeted his no-enemies-to-the-right nonsense about the Politico texts. David Reaboi is the sort of postliberal who talks about knowing “what time it is” unironically, but he’s understandably wary of making common cause with the Young Republican edgelords. “A coalition isn’t a hostage situation, where a bunch of people can hate me because I’m a Jew, but I’m supposed to defend them or else I’m the traitor,” he wrote on Tuesday, replying to Walsh. “Not happening.” The tribal logic of “our guys” needs to go both ways or else there is no tribe.

Josh Hammer, another Jewish right-winger, ran into a similar problem this week when Candace Owens casually implied to her millions of fans that he, uh, might have had advance knowledge of Charlie Kirk’s murder. (He’s mulling a defamation suit.) A post-Trump party that considers Owens to be one of “our guys” can’t coherently treat Hammer the same way, and vice versa. One will need to go.

The party will still accept that person’s support, of course, but with the understanding that voting Republican no longer necessarily makes you one of “our people.”

As for the suddenly homeless Young Republicans on the group chat, I wouldn’t worry about them. Like the fired and then un-fired DOGE employee, they’ll all quietly be rehired somewhere once the heat around the Politico story has cooled off. As one Dispatch colleague half-joked this morning, Vance may have gone easy on them because he knows he’ll need someone to staff his administration in four years.

Ultimately Trumpism is a moral project, not a political one. It would seem unjust, frankly, to exile them permanently from the movement for following its code of morality instead of the conventional one that most Americans observe. In time, Trump will rectify that injustice and install them somewhere in the government where their outlook is appreciated.

They’re still “our guys.” They’ll be directing ICE raids in no time.