The Wall Street Journal editorial board piled scorn on Vice President JD Vance over his reflexive defense of the Young Republicans operatives caught sharing racist and openly pro-Nazi messages in group chats.
“The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys,” Vance said, ignoring the fact that the operatives in these chats were between the ages of 18 and 40. He went on to attack the media for reporting on the leaked messages at all, and demanded everyone move on and focus on real issues.
This defense, the board wrote, is "deeply misguided."
"By treating actual adults — the chat participants weren’t teenagers — with kid gloves, they contribute to the cultural malady of infantilization. Mr. Vance in particular has blown an opportunity to set a good example for Republicans young and old. Excusing such behavior will only get us more of it. That’s how people actually ruin their lives," wrote the board. "It is likewise a poor defense to call these messages 'jokes.' You can learn a lot about people by what they think is funny."
This comes as, despite Vance's deflections, large swathes of the Republican Party are going out of their way to condemn the leaked texts, with even one dedicated MAGA senator, Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, repudiating Vance, saying, "I didn't hear the vice president's remarks, but I would never let my kids joke like that. That's a solid no." Meanwhile, a number of the operatives have lost their jobs, and the Kansas Young Republicans group, which was heavily involved, was shut down entirely by the state GOP.
To excuse this behavior, the board wrote, "is to outsource the right’s self-definition to the most vile and discrediting. The prospects for conservatives and Republicans would sour as a result." And in any case, they noted, "internal hygiene is good politics." They held up Winsome Earle-Sears, the GOP candidate for governor of Virginia, as a model for responding to the scandal, as she said everyone involved must be made to “step down from their positions.”
"You don’t need a Telegram account to see that this is a winning approach," the board concluded.