New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on Wednesday weighed in on controversial remarks made by young Republicans in a Telegram group chat tied to the Young Republican National Federation, a 15,000-member political group for GOP voters between the ages of 18 and 40 years old.
“This is not one person saying they love Hitler. This is a whole lot of people saying things that are so disgusting and so abhorrent that everybody from the president on down should condemn them. And there’s got to be consequences,” Hochul said during a press conference.
“Kick them out of the party. Take away their official roles. Stop using them as campaign advisers. There needs to be consequences. This bulls— has to stop,” she added.
Members of the group chat including Vermont state Sen. Samuel Douglass (R) and Peter Giunta, the now-former chief of staff for a New York assemblyman, have faced backlash.
Giunta was fired while Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R) urged Douglass to resign. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) has also condemned the contents of the chat.
However, Vice President JD Vance said recently discovered texts sent by Virginia Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones are “far worse” than the newly exposed Young Republicans’ chat.
“This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia,” Vance said in a post Tuesday on the social platform X.
Hochul did not reference Jones, but did claim GOP leaders have been promoting racist rhetoric in recent months that likely caused younger party members to believe their statement would be condoned by Republicans.
“The words to put into context that these are people who are part of a political party, one of two major political parties, and they believe in gas chambers and rape and discrimination based on the color of people’s skins,” Hochul told reporters.
“These are racist, sexist, disgusting remarks,” she added.
On Wednesday, Hochul said the texts, which were first reported by Politico, represent a broader push from the Republican Party to alienate elected officials and individuals based on race and nationality.
“We have a leader from the Republican Party in this state, the highest ranking individual, who in the backdrop of all this calls our candidate for mayor, one of our candidates for mayor, a jihadist and a terrorist,” Hochul said, referring to comments made about New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
“And then somehow says, oh, what they said, these young Republicans was wrong. Like, look at what you say yourself. Look at your inflammatory words,” she added. “And maybe they have an effect on these young people, many of whom you support and have supported you. And you ought to just do a little reexamination of how far this has gone,.”
Politico uncovered 2,900 pages of texts that featured messages promoting misogyny, racism and rape.
Still, Giunta, who was running for chair of the group more commonly known as Young Republicans, said some of the messages could have been doctored and alleged that screenshots were provided to Politico for “extortion” purposes by Gavin Wax, president of the New York Young Republican Club, in a “highly-coordinated year-long character assassination.”
“I am so sorry to those offended by the insensitive and inexcusable language found within the more than 28,000 messages of a private group chat that I created during my campaign to lead the Young Republican National Federation,” Giunta told Politico.
“While I take complete responsibility, I have had no way of verifying their accuracy and am deeply concerned that the message logs in question may have been deceptively doctored,” he added.
