'Actually encouraged!' Chris Hayes torches Vance for welcoming racism in GOP ranks

MSNBC's Chris Hayes wasted no time on Wednesday's edition of "All In" tearing into Vice President JD Vance's defense of the Young Republicans operatives caught up in Politico's bombshell piece documenting rampant racism and Nazi worship in their group chats, by dismissing these operatives as just kids telling jokes.

In fact, Vance laid blame not on the Republican operatives but on the journalists who reported the story.

"JD Vance is himself a creature of this extremely online right-wing underworld," said Hayes. "One wonders what's in his chat, where he gained notoriety last year for following lots of white supremacist accounts, including a self-proclaimed historian who praised Hitler and claimed that Winston Churchill was the chief villain of World War II. He still follows those accounts to this day, and maybe he just likes to read widely. Today, Vice President JD Vance did the thing that he always does."

"Now, just to be clear, the members of the Young Republicans are not 9 years old and they are not 15 or 16," Hayes noted. "In fact, they range in age from 18 to 40. JD Vance is 41. The people in this chat weren't young boys. They weren't kids. They were career Republican political operatives in their mid-20s and mid-30s. Otherwise known as adults or grown-ups, or fully-formed moral agents responsible for their actions."

Hayes laid out a number of the statements made in the chat, including one operative who said of Black athletes, "I'd go to thezoo if I wanted to watchmonkey play ball," another who openly praised Hitler, and a Vermont state senator who said that nonwhite women don't bathe.

"Again, these are the people JD Vance went to bat for today," said Hayes. "Adults, grown-ups, people who work in politics. The whole point here is to send the message from JD Vance. This behavior is good. Fine. Actually encouraged. It's part of what defines you as part of this in-group. Like being an edgy edgelord who makes offensive jokes that will be defended by Republicans in the absolute highest offices."

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