Chat, how cooked are the Young Republicans leaders?

An unsavory chat thread containing leaders of Young Republican groups nationwide has gone viral. These young (meaning under 40) fellas refer to blacks as “watermelon people,” use the slur “faggot,” say “I love Hitler” and make jokes about rape and sending people to gas chambers. “If we ever had a leak of this chat we could be cooked fr,” someone said in a moment of self-awareness. Well, the chat is leaked, and they are cooked. Fr.  

Cockburn takes this particular chatgate with a grain of sea salt. It sounds like young men shit-talking after a few beers to him. Yet every boomer lib on Facebook is shocked, shocked at this scandal, taking it as a sure sign that MechaHitler is about to institute The Handmaid’s Reich or some such thing.  

Meanwhile, the mightiest Young Republican of them all, Vice President J.D. Vance, has entered the chat, so to speak, invoking the texts of Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones, caught wishing death on his political opponent and her children. “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.” 

Vance may be right, but Cockburn must beg the question: why is the Vice President weighing in on this matter? Doesn’t he have anything better to do? We see him doing things all the time, so the answer must be yes. But it also makes us wonder what, exactly, J.D. Vance is hiding in his groupchat vault. Before he was a devoted husband and father of three and also the heir apparent to the American throne, he, too, was a snarky young Republican wiener. Is his text-based “grab her by the pussy”-moment waiting on some vengeful rival’s old iPhone in an attic somewhere in America? It will be a true Hillbilly Elegy when and if it emerges.