Republicans' leaked chats expose 'hubris' and 'impunity' at center of party: column
The recent group chat scandals that rocked the Republican Party revealed the "hubris" living at the core of the party's communications, according to a new column.
David A. Graham argued in a new column for The Atlantic that the racist and xenophobic group text messages unearthed in recent reporting show that some Republicans pose "a serious security risk for the country" because they opt to communicate in unreliable systems like text messages or on the encrypted messaging app Signal.
"When you’re texting about your admiration for Hitler, the danger is less about national security and more about job security," Graham wrote. "There’s no good place to call yourself a Nazi, but there are less risky ones. If you’re doing it in person with your edgelord friends, at least you’re not leaving a paper trail."
"Doing it where someone can easily screenshot your messages and send them to a reporter (two members of the Young Republican chat blamed internal rivalries for the leak) is much dumber," he added.
Even though the texts may generate backlash, Graham notes that few, if any, Republican officials will punish the people who wrote them.
"Republican figures are texting as though they have impunity because by many measures, they do," he argued. "Perversely, these stories may simply reinforce for some of them that everyone is texting the same things they are, and that they won’t face major consequences for doing so."
"If they get caught, they don’t need to apologize or change careers," he continued. "They can just tap out a simple 'lol, oops' and then return to what they were doing."