Trump touts slavery icon as Vance whitewashes racist texts. These guys aren’t saying quiet part out loud — they’re shouting

Donald Trump and JD Vance return to a topic Even many of his own supporters argue that his first term in the White House was derailed after just a few months: racism.

Even as his party wages a messaging war over the government shutdown and the president is on a victory lap over the Israel-Hamas peace plan, Trumpworld returned to several conversations this week about the Republican Party’s racism issues and expressions of support for violence that MAGA is trying to pin squarely on the left.

Donald Trump delivered a one-two punch to put that negative image of the GOP in place on Wednesday by heaping praise on a Confederate leader while highlighting the extreme anti-immigrant views of one of his closest advisers. The last moment was seen as follows: Charlottesville-like dog whistle In the eyes of many of Trump’s critics, he is far right.

For Vice President Vance, this meant a Whataboutism defense of pro-Nazi rhetoric, anti-Black vitriol, and open calls for violence and death. Leaked Young Republican chat logs hit Washington and Capitol Hill is like a sewer leak this week.

Replying to A. Policy article Revealing hundreds of examples of racial slurs against Black people, homophobic slurs against LGBTQ+ people, and a bottomless pit of misery, violence, and anger that appear to dominate the conversation among some prominent young conservative activists, Vance claims that a message originally sent by a Democrat running for attorney general in Virginia expressing a cold-blooded acceptance of violence against Republicans and their families was far worse. did.

In response to the Young Republicans’ chat outrage, Vance wrote: “This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said this could be the AG of Virginia. I refuse to engage in pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence.”

By comparison, in the group chat, members of some of the most prominent Young Republican groups in the country—organizations that send agents to Republican campaigns, congressional offices, and state legislators (and ages 18 to 40)—repeatedly stated that they wanted to see the mass murder of their political enemies and talked about putting people in gas chambers.

Unlike Vance, other prominent Republicans, such as House Speaker Mike Johnson, unequivocally condemned the texts. But at a time when the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are trying to refocus the narrative, they still turn out to be simple errors and distractions.

And this is the kind of “ironic” racism that has long permeated the circles of the young conservative right; The most famous example is shown by Nick Fuentes and his “Groyper” group. Long considered persona non grata at the CPAC and Turning Point USA conferences, young conservatives in the College Republican and Young Republican circles have been increasingly warning for years about the growing influence of such extreme online shock value racism and sexism in such groups.

This week this wing of the far right appeared to be gaining real traction in Washington.

As if that wasn’t enough, at a White House event on Wednesday, Trump appeared to joke that his senior aide Stephen Miller has views that are unpalatable to most Americans.

“I’d like to thank Stephen Miller, who was in the audience right there. I’d love to have him with us. [come up]. I love watching him on TV. I would love for him to come and reveal his true feelings. Maybe not his truest feelings. That might be going a little too far,” Trump joked.

On the same day that the architect of mass deportation joked about his “truest feelings,” Trump took a completely unprovoked call out to Confederate General Robert E. Lee, a symbol of absolute racial resentment in American society.

to declare this a room full of some of the nation’s greatest business leaders “it would be nice” With Lee’s statue in Washington the president added that “it wouldn’t be a problem for me” to honor a man who waged war against the American government and sought to break up the Union to assert the seceded states’ presumed right to maintain the institution of human slavery for Black people.

Meanwhile, officials at the State Department continue to use the Charlie Kirk assassination as a cudgel against visa holders. Posted a topic on X This week, we celebrate the revocation of status for scores of unnamed foreign nationals who posted messages on social media denouncing Kirk as a racist and misogynist after his death. Not because he threatened violence against her, but simply because he had the audacity to criticize her works.

Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, was shot to death by a sniper while speaking at Utah Valley University last month in an attack that sparked furious efforts by the right to pursue criminal charges against Americans, public officials and private citizens alike who condemned Kirk and his views in the wake of his murder.

Congress cannot even get rid of this cloud.

Johnson held a news conference on Thursday to mark the 16th day of the federal government shutdown. Wages at stake for members of the armed forces resulted in thousands of federal workers being furloughed. Thousands more were targeted for revenge by the White House and the Office of Management and Budget current reduction (layoff) initiatives.

Instead, several questions Johnson asked Thursday morning focused not only on the Nazi-loving texts uncovered by Politico but also on the discovery of an image depicting an American flag with its stripes rearranged. A swastika in the office of a Republican congressman.

The image, seen on the staff room wall during a virtual meeting, was found in the office of Rep. Dave Taylor, a congressman from Ohio. Taylor said she called Capitol Police “immediately” Policyafter learning the image. However, responsibility for attaching the painting to the partition wall in his office has not yet been determined.

“I am aware of an image in my office that appears to depict a disgusting and highly inappropriate symbol next to an employee,” Taylor said. “The content of this image does not reflect the values ​​or standards of this office, my staff, or me, and I condemn it in the strongest terms.”

Such speeches have always given congressional Republicans migraines, although many in Trump’s inner circle never paused for long. During Trump’s first term, Republicans on the Hill were known for dodging reporters in hallways and elevators, often refusing to answer questions about topics like Charlottesville and the president’s comments about “shithole countries” in Africa and the Caribbean.

Johnson and Thune don’t have that luxury. They are stuck in front of the cameras, both because of their majority and because of Democrats’ ongoing efforts to “win” the government shutdown messaging war.

And these are inextricably tied to Trump and his rhetoric.