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Quint.com Wilson hey folks, welcome back to another episode of the Enemies List podcast where I take a group or an individual every week and we name them and shame them. Now I know shame is an unfashionable emotion in this day and age and that the MAGA world believes that shame is for weak libtards who are too are too triggered to stand up and fight in the modern environment. Well, we are going to punch down a little bit today, but I want to be clear about something. The people we're going to Punch have been described by J.D. vance as children. By focusing on what kids are saying in a group chat. Grow up. I'm sorry, focus on the real issues. Don't focus what on what kids say in group chats. But the reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes like, 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 caused to ruin their lives. Too young and morally unformed to truly understand the, the depth of what they're doing, to understand the wrongness of what they're doing. I am here to call absolute nonsense on that. Today on the enemies list, the young Republicans. All right, folks, by now you've probably heard the story that broke in Politico that a group of young Republicans was on a telegram chat with hundreds of young Republicans, by the way, all from various leadership roles in different groups. Now, these people are mostly in their 30s, 20s, and 30s, some as old as 40. And in this group, they referred to black people as monkeys and watermelon people. They joked about gas chambers. They joked about the Jews. They, they, they said, I love Hitler. Hitler Stanage joked about rape. They're about killing their opponents. You know, and everybody's been in a group chat where they're an asshole. Never been in a group chat where I said, hey, I love Hitler. And the response wasn't the is wrong with you? The response was, yeah, I love Hitler too. Hitler rules these uirs. And I want to name them for you because I want you to hear their names and I want you to know who they are. And I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to make sure that we don't let their names disappear into an anonymous story. I want the Internet to remember these names. I want the Internet to know who these people are. I want the search engines to find them when their names are mentioned in the future. And this is just a few of them, but these are the most egregious of the ones that were on this list. Bobby Walker of New York, Peter Junta. That's G I U N T A of New York. Joe Maligno, which literally means malevolent in Italian, by the way. Maligno. Joe Maligno. M A L I G N O. Alex Dwyer of Kansas, William Hendricks of Kansas. Annie K Caddy of New York, Luke Mossiman of Arizona, Samuel Douglas of Vermont and Brianna Douglas of Vermont. These are just a few of them. Okay? These are folks who in the privacy of this telegram group, never realize that people take screenshots because they do. First of all, let me take a quick detour out of the moral vacuum of these assholes. Never write down something that you can email. Never email something that you could text. Never text something that you can signal. Never signal something. The other guy should be smart enough to figure out what you need him to do. The things they were saying on this, it stopped being a joke at some point because it was the context of everything they were talking about. All of it was I want my opponents in the gas chamber. I want to see people on fire. I want them to burn. I want them to die. I'm going to stomp these F words. I'm going to stomp these n words. These young people, they're young, but they're not children. Knew what they were doing. You know what folks? They knew what they were doing. Because this is the political culture on the maga, right? This is the political culture that has been wrought by Donald Trump and wrought by the alt right. Because the alt right isn't the fringe of the Republican Party anymore. It is the Republican Party. These people. One of the people on this chat was a state senator in the state of Vermont. A state senator, an elected official who has run for office and stood before voters and yet is on a pro Nazi white supremacist chat. Now to I want to give 1 second of credit to the Republican leadership in Vermont because from the governor on down, they immediately called for this guy to out. You're gone. Now I don't know what the status of it is as I'm recording this, but they weren't equivocal. They didn't wait around. They didn't wait to see what Trump said. They didn't wait to see what Vance said. They just said no. Out, gone. Would that that was the case everywhere because most of the Republicans in the country, including the speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, defended it. Most of the Republican leaders at the White House have defended it. Haha. Don't get caught next time, kids. J.D. vance spent time going on television for the last two days to defend this outrage and I want you to know why he did that. Yes, what they did is reprehensible, but what Vance did was even more so and in a calculating way. Jenny Vance knows something. He knows Donald Trump is old and sick and he's got a really good chance of being president. Trump could drop dead any day as Vance's calculus, even if he doesn't. Vance figures I'll be the lead gog. In 28, I'll be the guy who's the head of the pack. In 28, I'll be the one who could most articulate Trump's connection to myself. So J.D. vance went out and defended these people, including people who are almost 40 years old. The average age of the people he was defending is about 32 or 33. Oh, they're just kids. They're just, it's their high spirited lurk. It's just them being funny. Ha ha. Oh, you, you hear things worse than that in the Oval Office every day. If you hear things worse than that in the Oval Office, J.D. you have a moral responsibility to say what the fuck? And walk out if you hear things like that in the Oval Office every day. Do you hear pro Nazi stuff in the Oval Office every day? Well, I mean, I guess if Stephen Miller's in the media, you probably do. Do you hear jokes about calling black people watermelon people and monkeys in the Oval Office every day, JD Is that, is that what you're telling me? You hear jokes about people raping people and murdering their political opponents every day in the Oval Office? Because if you do, it really tells you a lot you need to know about J.D. vance, if that's your real name. None of this is normal. Just reminding everybody, none of this is normal. These people on this list, I'm going to read you their names again. You know why I'm going to do it again? Because I'm a spiteful bitch. And I want you to remember these names. Bobby Walker. Peter Junta. Joe Maligno. Alex Dwyer. William Hendricks. Annie K. Caddy. Luke Mossiman. Samuel Douglas. Brianna Douglas. I want you to remember those names. Because you know what? In the MAGA world, their sin was not committing these statements. Their sin was not speaking these words. Their sin was not believing these things. Their sin was getting caught. And you know, we've got some reporting about how this came to be. There's some sort of internecine yr warfare as there has always been, including when I was a Young Republican, there was always wire warfare, which is why I basically said I have a fucking wire because it's a snake pit even then. But no Hitler fans. Back in my day, they got caught and the White House knew about it days in advance. They knew that a guy named Mike Martels had been pressured by another guy named Gavin Wax who was in the administration to release this chat log. They knew what was in the chat log before the story came out. From what I can understand even after reading these Chat logs. Even after reading these statements, there is no context that makes it better. The White House knowing about it in advance does not make it better. Which is why JD Vance decided he would be the guy to go out and defend the Hitler fan club. The master race, kids. Why'd he do it? He's running for president in 2028, guys, and he knows that he's following the Steve Bannon rule. And the Steve Bannon rule in American politics is that you have no enemies to your right. This is why the Republican Party today is fine with the proud boys and fine with the Patriot front and fine with the, with the white supremacist movement because they don't feel like they have anybody who's an enemy of theirs to their right. God knows the Democratic Party doesn't have that, doesn't share the no enemies to my left philosophy. They have basically. They're basically like a, like a John Woo movie where everybody's pointing a gun at each other all the time and the doves are flying around. But Vance defended them because he wants that part of the Republican constituency. He knows there is a part of the Republican voter base that is part of that white supremacist movement that is part of that pro Nazi movement, that is part of that idea of, oh, the white replacement theory, Stephen Miller, probably the apotheosis of it. In this administration, Vance is just a hustler. He's just a guy who's going to do what he needs to do to get to the whim he's going to. He's a guy who's going to do what he has to do to get to the ex. As we say, and I don't mean an ex spouse, I mean to the target. And his target is the presidency. Rest assured, we'll be right back. If you're still overpaying for wireless, it's time to say yes to saying no. At Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no bs. 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Speeds may slow above 35 gig on the unlimited plan. Taxes and fees are extra. See Mint Mobile for details. And now back to the show. But these people who made these jokes, I'm going to go back to them for a minute. They are adults. They have jobs. They work in politics, they work in government. They work closely with elected officials. Elise Stefanik and Mike Lawler both had close ties to Peter Junta and to Bobby Walker, apparently. And they had to denounce them even though they were denouncing them. You could know Elise had her fingers crossed behind her back because she's running for governor and she wants those people back on her side. So quietly, she's saying, come on, man, you really effed up. That's, that's, that's awful. You shouldn't have done that. Knock, wink, whatever. You know who these people are. They didn't get in trouble because they praised Hitler. They got in trouble because their chat leaked. Let that sink in for a minute. Because this is who will rise to run campaigns for Republican candidates. These are people who will themselves be Republican candidates. These are people who are going to rise up that political food chain, a food chain I know very well from my youth, my misspent youth. And they're going to get more and more consequential jobs and they're going to get more and more consequential roles in campaigns or in legislative offices or in think tanks. And you've already seen that this government today, the Trump administration is perfectly happy having overt racists in its midst. You know, Stephen Miller. But if you look over the State Department, Darren Beatty, who is a guy who is a outright white supremacist, loud and proud, runs public diplomacy at our State Department. You don't know why we shut down usaid. Because he doesn't want to feed the brown people. If your political culture is one where you're praising Hitler, it's not ironic. It's not funny. It's a, you know, I'm making a joke about Hitler to prove a point. No, it's because these people now believe in it. The New York Young Republicans are a particularly pernicious den of vipers who hate one another with the fire of a billion suns. Best it ever has been in politics, especially wire politics, as I mentioned. But, you know, you haven't heard from a single one of these people actual contrition. You haven't heard a single one of these people say, you know, I've looked at what I said and did. I've examined my heart. I've examined why I would say those things. I thought about where I got that belief, that praising Hitler, calling for new concentration camps, wanting to see my enemies in gas chambers and on fire, joking about rape, insulting black people, calling them monkeys. You know, none of them has come out and said, what I did was. Was wrong. What I did was disgusting, and I've examined my conscience about it. A few of them have put out these anodyne statements. These. These sort of, like, my words were misinterpreted and taken out of context. No, they weren't. There's no context for saying, oh, I love Hitler. Hitler, yay. There's no context for that. There is no context for that. Your context disappeared the moment your moral bearings allowed you to praise Adolf Hitler. The call for concentration camps to attack Jews and black people and immigrants as if they were animals who need to be put in concentration camps. It's tempting to punch down on these people. It really is. They deserve it. Not one of the guys you've seen in these pictures of these guys is exactly, let's say, the physical ideal of the master race they claim to represent. I don't know that many of them could make it up a flight of stairs, but yet they're perfectly happy online thinking that every other race is inferior to them. Take a look. Just. Just look at the pictures. You will find it fascinating. But that idea, that ugliness that's bound them up into this culture is so strong, all they're doing right now is figuring out how they can get out of trouble in the short term. They're like, the cheating spouse is like, how do I stop her from yelling at me now? How do I stop this argument now when having the argument might be something you want to do? None of these people, not one of these people is thinking about how they can get right with God on this, how they can be a better human being on this. You know? And I can tell you something. When I was a Republican consultant, I was one for a long time. I did not run for the spotlight. I did not seek out a lot of Press coverage. I did not try to be out there front center on the cameras all the time. None of that. I liked what I did. I was very well compensated. You brought me in when things were bad. I took care of stuff and I left. I got paid. The media buyer would send me a big fat check and you would never see my name on the report. It's a great business model. Back in the day, I did a lot of things. There were hard things. I'm not going to apologize for them now. But I have a recognition that that system even then had lines, even then had rules. You know, in all my time as a Republican political consultant, I never once, never one time attacked the children of a Democratic candidate. Never once. I rarely would go after even the spouse of a Democratic candidate if they weren't directly involved in the politics. They were. Were a civilian family generally was kept out of it. These are the kind of people who look at the families of folks that are getting rounded up by ICE as animals, concentration camp fodder. These are kind of people who look at their political enemies as people who should be killed. It's not a joke for them. It's not some complicated, elaborate online prank, character play acting for them. This is who they are. This is what manga has become. You will find more people with these views inside that universe now because they've been let free. We'll be right back. And now back to the show. You know, I had a long, slow divorce from the Republican Party, and It started in 2015 when I came out and said, not going to support Trump. Can't do it, can't do it, can't do it, can't do it. And all of my friends in the political business, both elected officials and other consultants, we're like, damn, man. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for speaking out. I'm gonna. I'm gonna do it too, in a week or two. You know what happened a week or two? Nothing. And it slowly became this sort of like, oh, I've got a mortgage, man, I got a business. We gotta keep doing it. I got it. There was a great balancing test with many people I was willing to. To do it. Gave up a very, very lucrative process and lucrative company to do it. But as time has gone on, there are fewer and fewer of those people, the ones I used to know, who still are inside, who will even whisper their dissent, who will even say, oh, man, that was really wrong. Those kids should never have said that. That was ridiculous. Those guys should never have said that stuff. I post a couple of them online the last couple days, like, can you believe this shit? Not asking them to condemn it, but like, can you believe this shit? I basically got the J.D. vance answer. Oh, yeah, it's social media, so there's tolerance inside the manga gop. They're willing to laugh it off, willing to shake it off. They're willing to say, ah, no big deal. If your party has reached the point where praising Hitler and unbelievable use of these racial slurs at a level that isn't like once or twice, it's the entire conversation. If you're talking about putting your political opponents in death camps and gas chambers and setting them on fire, stop being a joke at some point. And the people in the party who don't think this is a big deal are showing you the moral collapse of the Republican Party. And so, yes, these assholes. And they are. They are people again. I'm going to read their names again. So I want the search engines to find it. Bobby Walker, Peter Junta, Joe Maligno, Alex Dwyer, William Hendricks, Annie K. Caddy, Luke Mossiman, Samuel Douglas, Brianna Douglas. I want you to remember their names. The Internet has an undefeated record of remembering people's names. These people have become part of a culture that accepts. That accepts that conversation. You know, I had one person tell me yesterday, this is the tip of an iceberg. This is the very tip of an iceberg. Not only among yrs, but among. I'm told there's a legislative staff chat in the House that I'm trying to chase down right now. That is, I was told it is a hundred times worse. It's out there somewhere. Anybody wants to leak it to me, I'll protect your identity. I'm on signal. You know how to find me. But I want to do one thing before we close this episode of the Enemies List. I want to invite any one of these people to come on my podcast. I want to invite any one of them to come on my podcast. We have a conversation. Because I would be fascinated to know what exactly is in your head when you write those things. I'd be fascinated to understand how you took what was a hard culture of politics that I'm a part of, where you hit hard, but that there are still fundamental underlying good and evil questions where you never cross it, where you never think Hitler may be the solution to this problem. Any one of you wants to come on the show? Absolutely. I will give you a full hour. We will have a full conversation. You can say whatever you want about yourself. You can defend yourself however you want. You can attack me all you want, but I'm. Well, I'm willing to welcome Bobby Walker, Peter Junta, Joe Maligno, Alex Dwyer, William Hendricks, Annie K. Caddy, Luke Mossman, Samuel Douglas and Brianna Douglas. Any one of you, combination permutation. All you, none of you, whatever. Come on the show. Come on the show. You want to talk tough online? You want to be big swinging dicks online? Come on. Come on the show. Have the conversation. Because I want to know how Hitler is, okay? I want to know how a guy like William Hendricks, who, if he saw a black person would. Would. Would waddle away as fast as he could, is free to use the N word and it's all variations and permutations, like it's a comma, like it's punctuation. You're all welcome. Love to have you on. I'm not going to yell at you. I'm going to ask you questions. I know you won't, but you probably should. Let me tell you, if you think about it, you think about what's ahead of you now, your lives ahead of you, your career's ahead of you. You'll have one of two options. You either get this stuff out there now, talk about it, show contrition, show understanding, or you're going to end up in a downward spiral where you'll work for edgier and edgier loser candidates. You'll go further and further into the rabbit hole. You'll find yourself 50, 60 years old. You've never made any money. You're unemployable by any civilized person. You're probably alone. You ought to get it out now. It's a journey to moral redemption that people can take, but they have to choose to take it. They have to choose to get on the path. They have to choose to think about who they are as a person. And that, folks, is this week's enemies list. Hey, thanks for listening, everybody. Really appreciate all of you. You can catch me on the Lincoln Project podcast on Tuesday nights. I stream On Lincoln Square with the strategy session with Stuart Stevens, Joe Trippy and an amazing cast of guests on Thursday nights. The Breakdown. Maya May and I talked about the week's news. On Fridays, Andrew Wilson and I break apart the polling of the week on behind the Numbers. And you can catch me on my substack against all enemies. I appreciate everybody. We will talk to you again next time.