A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The Trump administration is still looking for a new head of the Office of Special Counsel. The administration withdrew its first choice, Paul Ingrassia, after Politico found racist and antisemitic text messages he sent in a group chat with other Republicans. And that followed Politico's reporting on a group chat among young GOP leaders that was also racist and antisemitic. Politico reporters Calder McHugh and Catherine Kim wrote about those texts and their impact on Republican politics, and Calder joins us now. In your article, you refer to some of these young Republicans as edgelords. What's an edgelord?
CALDER MCHUGH: Yeah. So it's somebody who is extremely online, spends a lot of their time on the internet and is really looking to make other people online angry. That's their main thing that they're doing. So they're pushing the boundaries. There's a lot of offensive humor. There's shock value. And a lot of this has become commonplace in many of the online communities that young far-right people frequent.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. So could it just be that then, that these people are taking the most crude approach possible to make people angry instead of being actual racists?
MCHUGH: I think that's certainly some of it, but, you know, when you start to talk, when you start to say stuff like, I love Hitler, you know, in these group chats, I think that, you know, obviously a lot of it is shock value, but, you know, that starts to become real life. You start to think that way. You start to, you know, orient your life in that direction. So I think that we can't just entirely discount this as simple puerile online humor.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. Now, the headline of your piece is "The Leaked Young Republicans' Messages Could Be The Future Of Politics." So how deeply has such extreme speech really kind of seeped into the mainstream?
MCHUGH: Yeah. So I think the best way to think about this is that for a long time, people had this refrain, you know, Twitter is not real life. But now there's a real blurred line between online activity and real life. So basically a lot of this online activity that, you know, we once thought was kind of confined to the internet has become really important in all political circles and in particular in these Young Republican circles. So, yeah, I think you can really think about it like that.
MARTÍNEZ: And, you know, we call them Young Republicans. Vice President JD Vance characterized the group chat as kids doing stupid things. The vice president is 41. One of the chat members is 40. So, I mean, how fair a characterization is it for JD Vance to just say that they're kids doing stupid things?
MCHUGH: Yeah. So it's quite clever of him to do that, and it works because of the name, right? - the Young Republicans.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
MCHUGH: But these people are all anywhere between 18 and 40. Most of the members of the group chat in question were in their late 20s or early to mid-30s. So, yeah, I think that's the right question - how long can you really be a Young Republican? You know, that's sort of the membership requirements of the group, but JD Vance himself is only a year older than - you know, he would've aged out of the group a year ago.
MARTÍNEZ: Aged out of the group. Now, sending offensive messages not necessarily limited to Republicans. The Democratic candidate for attorney general in Virginia, Jay Jones, sent text messages where he suggested political violence against a Republican rival. So, Calder, are edgelords that you're writing about confined necessarily to one party at this point?
MCHUGH: No, I wouldn't say so. I mean, you know, every party has this. I think the Young Republicans in particular, this is in these online circles. So that's where they're getting...
MARTÍNEZ: OK.
MCHUGH: ...A lot of this from. And I would say that that's what's different.
MARTÍNEZ: Calder McHugh, a reporter for Politico. Thanks a lot.
MCHUGH: Thank you.
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