Republicans Struggle With Blowback from Young Republican Leaks

October 21st, 2025
James Savin

This past Tuesday, a Politico exposé revealed thousands of leaked messages in a Telegram group chat between prominent members of the Young Republicans group. These messages included racist and antisemitic remarks, jokes about raping their political opponents and putting them in gas chambers, referring to their enemies and others as the f-slur, and multiple references to Hitler.

Members of the group chat included Bobby Walker, who at the time was the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans, and Peter Giunta, who was, at the time, the chair of the same organization. The group chat also included Samuel Douglass, a current Vermont state Senator; Michael Bartels, a senior adviser in the office of general counsel within the US Small Business Administration; and multiple other high ranking members of the Young Republicans's organization.

The group chat was formed early January this year to rally support for Giunta’s campaign to be national chair of the Young Republican’s organization. He ran, and lost, against current chairman Hayden Padgett. Much of the group chat’s vitriol was directed towards Padgett and his supporters, with group members calling him “Hayden F----t” and one member declaring, “RAPE HAYDEN.” Bigoted remarks made up a large amount of the group’s messages as its political purpose merged into casual conversation. Giunta made the majority of the included quotes in Politico’s article, including referring to black people as “monkeys,” saying that anyone that votes against him, “is going to the gas chamber,” and saying that, “If your pilot is a she and she looks ten shades darker than someone from Sicily, just end it there. Scream the no no word.” When a member of the group informed Giunta that the Michigan Young Republicans promised to vote for “the most right wing person,” to lead the organization, Giunta responded, “Great. I love Hitler.”

In the week since it was published, many Republicans reacted with disgust to the messages, calling for the immediate resignations of those involved, and condemning the bigoted content of the group chat. The board of directors of the National Young Republicans released a statement calling for every involved member to immediately resign from their chapter. Republican Gov. Phil Scott of Vermont said in an official statement, “The hateful statements made in this group chat are disgusting and unacceptable. The vile, racist, bigoted, and antisemitic dialogue that has been reported is deeply disturbing. There is simply no excuse for it. Those involved should resign from their roles immediately and leave the Republican party—including Vermont State Senator Sam Douglass.”

Others dismissed the group chat’s contents as meaningless jokes, accusing those calling for resignations of inciting infighting. On a recent episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, Vice President JD Vance dismissed the contents of the group chat as “…Edgy, offensive jokes,” saying, “I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke – telling a very offensive, stupid joke – is cause to ruin their lives.” Vance is being accused of attempting to downplay the true severity of the leaks as Mother Jones reports that the “kids” in the group chat ranged in age from 24 to 35.

Gavin Wax, the current president of the New York Young Republicans, is being accused by Giunta of releasing the group chat to Politico as a “character assassination. Wax was further accused of blackmailing Bartels into leaking the group chat to him before leaking it to Politico exposé coauthor Jason Beeferman. While this claim has not yet been verified, it has led to an onslaught of anti-semitic hatred towards Wax, who is a practicing Jew. One Twitter post with more than 4,600 likes at the time of publishing, writes, “There is no such thing as 'democrat' or 'republican'. It’s jews vs you.”