It had to be deliberate: JD Vance is simply too smart and too politically savvy for it to be accidental. (And in just a few paragraphs, we’ll reveal his chess move that — if successful — will end the 2025 government shutdown with a complete and total surrender by the Democratic Party.)
Either way, the pivotal moment is just 24 hours away: Saturday, Oct. 18, the day of the nationwide “No Kings” protests. That’s when we’ll find out if Vance’s bold PR strategy succeeded. (More on that in just a sec.)
But we begin with one simple question: Why the heck did Vance needlessly interject himself in the Young Republican group-text scandal?
If you haven’t been paying attention, three days ago, Politico leaked seven months of Telegram text messages between Young Republican leaders from Arizona, New York, Kansas, and Vermont. Lots of the content was explicitly NSFW.
As Politico described it:
The 2,900 pages of chats, shared among a dozen millennial and Gen Z Republicans between early January and mid-August, chronicle their campaign to seize control of the national Young Republican organization on a hardline pro-Donald Trump platform. Many of the chat members already work inside government or party politics, and one serves as a state senator.
Together, the messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric circulate freely — and where the Trump-era loosening of political norms has made such talk feel less taboo among those positioning themselves as the party’s next leaders.
Those two paragraphs form the crux of Politico’s thesis: These text messages, between half a dozen no-name kids, are newsworthy because — obviously — they all did it because of Donald Trump! (Otherwise, this Politico story was just a salacious “gotcha” moment that embarrassed a bunch of snot-nosed tykes whom nobody had ever heard of before, with no real relevance to national politics.)
Clearly, the Young Republicans’ texts were stupid, ill-advised, and offensive:
They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.
William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n–ga” and “n–guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”
[…]
Mixed into formal conversations about whipping votes, social media strategy and logistics, the members of the chat slung around an array of slurs — which POLITICO is republishing to show how they spoke. Epithets like “f—-t,” “retarded” and “n–ga” appeared more than 251 times combined.
When the “scandal” broke, the Young Republicans had three PR options:
- Issue a sniveling, groveling, all-encompassing apology and beg for forgiveness;
- Issue a limited apology;
- Offer no apology.
The Young Republicans chose option #1 — and they did so with gusto. The Kansas chapter of Young Republicans has already disbanded, and most of the GOP establishment sang from the same hymn sheet as Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.):
The deeply offensive and hateful comments reportedly made in a private chat among members of the New York State Young Republicans are disgusting. They should resign from any leadership position immediately and reflect on how far they have strayed from basic human respect and… pic.twitter.com/gWuhczzolv
— Congressman Mike Lawler (@RepMikeLawler) October 14, 2025
If I were in charge, I would’ve gone with option #2: A limited apology that explicitly calls for proportionality. It wouldn’t take more than a few sentences, but here’s the kicker: You wanna write it REALLY boring.
So I’d release something like this: “Young Republicans, an organization first established in 1856, strives to hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards, so we’re dismayed, disappointed, and deeply saddened by the private text messages between certain individuals. Since we’re firm believers in the long-established American legal standard of the ‘punishment fitting the crime,’ all participants, effective immediately, will be stripped of Young Republican leadership roles; barred from future Young Republican events; prohibited from speaking on behalf of Young Republicans; and hereby disqualified from all upcoming Young Republican elections. We also hold the right to extend these punishments, should additional information come to light. No further comments will be issued.”
Boom. That’s it. That’s all they had to do.
(By the way, there’s a tactical reason why we made our statement ultra-boring and drier than the Sahara: Witty, clever statements get republished; ultra-boring ones end up on the cutting room floor! Since it’s not advantageous for the GOP to advance this storyline, we wanna make it as boring and unsexy as possible.)
When a minor “scandal” like this breaks, the American people aren’t expecting a head on a pike, but they want the punishment to fit the crime. Nothing more, nothing less. As long as you do that, this isn’t the kind of story that has legs…
…unless a high-ranking political leader gives it legs. And that’s exactly what Vance just did.
The vice president suggested the real problem is the idea that an offensive joke can ruin a young person’s life.
“The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys,” Vance said on “The Charlie Kirk Show.” “They tell edgy, offensive jokes. That’s what kids do. And 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.”
Question for the audience: Why do you think Vance chose to opine on this topic?
Think about it: He wasn’t caught on his heels by a pushy political reporter. This wasn’t a gotcha question that led to a foot-in-mouth slip-up. It was something Vance volunteered — entirely on his own — while on a podcast where he completely controlled the subject matter.
So this was obviously deliberate.
And since Vance is too old to be a Young Republican and had absolutely nothing to do with the “scandal,” he had far more PR options than the YRs did. Among them: “Not my money, not my circus!”
Meaning, he didn’t have to address it at all.
When asked, he could’ve said: “I’m the vice president of the United States of America. I’m focused on stopping wars and protecting American families. I don’t have time to police Gen Z text messages, so ask someone else about it.”
That’s what you’d expect!
Instead, he did something different: He deliberately commented on the story — thus elevating its profile and instantly making it nationally “newsworthy” — before pivoting sharply:
A friend shared these truly disturbing messages from a Young Republican group chat. The group’s leader “genuinely” calls for murdering the children of his political opponents.
Oh wait, actually this is from Jay Jones, the Democrat running for Attorney General in Virginia. pic.twitter.com/gGcUmlPXXN
— JD Vance (@JDVance) October 16, 2025
This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia. I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence. pic.twitter.com/kV57Wq7BLG
— JD Vance (@JDVance) October 14, 2025
He leveraged the “outrage” over the Young Republicans texting story to shine a bright national spotlight on the Jay Jones scandal that’s brewing in Virginia.
In Virginia’s attorney general’s race, exactly one month before Election Day, the National Review broke news about the Democratic attorney general nominee, Jay Jones, fantasizing about murdering his political enemies — along with their children.
I don’t believe the National Review’s timing was coincidental. As we discussed in last week’s VIP column (which you guys should DEFINITELY sign up for):
What caught my eye was the timing: The texts were provided [to the National Review] by Republican House Delegate Carrie Coyner. (Well, National Review doesn’t say that explicitly. The article said: “In a series of text messages obtained by National Review…” but I assume that’s code for “Coyner gave us the story” because Jay Jones sure as hell didn’t.)
[…]
Additionally, National Review provides the blow-by-blow account of a private phone call between Coyner and Jones, where Jones (allegedly) doubled down on his murder fantasies. Once again, that info certainly didn’t come from the Jones campaign. I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect this was something the GOP and Coyner were coordinating together.
Which means, the GOP was sitting on this info for months or years, waiting for just the right time to drop it.
And so far, this issue has been a big winner for the Virginia GOP. Not only is the Republican incumbent AG, Jason Miyares, now in the lead, but Jones’ shocking comments and texts are threatening to sink the Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor and governor as well. (In Virginia, the three statewide offices — governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general — are all on separate ballots.)
It’s the first election in recent memory where the attorney general candidate — the low man on the ticket! — is expected to have coattails that elevate the two higher-up positions.
This issue is resonating so forcefully, even in Blue Virginia, because we’re in a post-Charlie Kirk reality: Political violence isn’t an abstraction anymore. It’s real. It’s painful. And it’s not going away.
And the American people don’t like it one bit.
Connecting the Democratic Party to political violence isn’t just a winner in Virginia: It’s a winner across the entire country.
That’s the genius of Vance’s political jiu-jitsu: He elevated the profile of the Young Republican texting scandal — and then leveraged it to tar-and-feather the Democrats for being unserious pearl-clutchers who refuse to condone left-wing political violence.
And he did it 72 hours before the next “No Kings” rally. That wasn’t coincidental either!
During the 2025 “Schumer Shutdown,” there are two dueling storylines. The Democrats are pushing a narrative of Trump being an evil fascist and/or wannabe dictator who hates democracy. (Hence the “No Kings” name.)
All good and decent people hate Trump, you see.
Meanwhile, the Republican narrative is completely different: Left-wing political violence is on the rise; the Democrats are unserious showboaters; and they’ve sabotaged the federal government to protect free healthcare for illegal aliens.
Now, Vance has just painted their entire movement as Jay Jones-inspired, Antifa-aligned, violent actors. He’s taken a Virginia campaign issue and nationalized the outrage.
During tomorrow’s “No King” rallies, perhaps the left-wing protesters will be completely nonviolent. If so, Vance’s PR trap won’t work.
But if they are violent — if police are attacked, property is torched, people are killed, and the left-wing activists do their standard stupid crap (like wave pro-Hamas signs, fly Mexican flags, and mock Charlie Kirk’s death) — then Vance has just planted the seeds that will lead to their destruction.
And poor Chuck Schumer will be left holding the bag.
Because Jay Jones isn’t a Virginia phenomenon anymore. He’s now the face of the entire Democratic Party: Angry, vicious, violent, spiteful people who hate conservatives more than they love America.
Not exactly ideal PR messaging when the American people are still deciding who deserves to be blamed for the government shutdown!
And we’re just one or two shocking “No Kings” images from Vance’s PR plan hitting paydirt. It could happen tomorrow in virtually any city.
Getcha popcorn ready. Tomorrow is gonna be VERY interesting.
One Last Thing: The Schumer Shutdown is upon us. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.
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