A MAGA media insider froze onstage when asked to condemn a cache of Nazi praising messages from a leaked Republican group chat, turning a Kennedy Center town hall into a very public cringe. Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for Turning Point USA and executive producer of The Charlie Kirk Show, was pressed multiple times to denounce thousands of vile texts allegedly exchanged among leaders in the Young Republican National Federation. The messages included slurs, references to gas chambers, and a blunt declaration, “I love Hitler.”
Kolvet was part of a NewsNation forum on political violence, a setting that practically begged for moral clarity. Instead, viewers got deflection. “We saw this Nazi group chat, which I am sure you condemn, right,” liberal social media personality Adam Mockler asked, as fellow panelists Bill O’Reilly and Stephen A. Smith looked on. “We can talk about it,” Kolvet replied. Mockler tried again, “Do you condemn it,” he asked. Kolvet repeated, “I want to talk about it,” a stall that landed like a siren.
Mockler compared Kolvet to Vice President JD Vance, who recently minimized the scandal after Politico reported on the leaked messages. Vance initially waved away the uproar as pearl clutching, then went further on The Charlie Kirk Show, calling the senders “a bunch of kids” and arguing that “young boys” tell “edgy, offensive jokes.” The vice president warned against “ruin[ing] their lives” over what he framed as immature humor. Kolvet, who helps run Kirk’s operation, offered the same dance, lots of talk about context, little appetite to simply say, this is wrong.
That is Charlie Kirk’s producer Andrew Kolvet in the red tie pic.twitter.com/k0XOUUABRk
— Majority Report (@majorityfm) October 16, 2025
Politico obtained months of Telegram correspondence involving dozens of YRNF leaders in states like New York, Kansas, Arizona, and Vermont. The organization is supposed to be the GOP’s talent pipeline for members between 18 and 40, not a breeding ground for racist cosplay. After publication, Republican officials in several states quickly condemned the messages, and some of the figures named in the chat lost political jobs. The 15,000 member YRNF publicly called for resignations, branding the leaked language “vile and inexcusable.”
Which is why Kolvet’s dodge felt so glaring. This was not a trap question about arcane policy, it was a gimme, do you condemn a group chat that praises Hitler and jokes about killing opponents. In a room built for declarations, the closest thing to a full stop came from the audience’s collective wince.
On one side, a youth faction that keeps rolling off the moral cliff in pursuit of shock theater. On the other, party aligned media figures who cannot bring themselves to deliver a straight denunciation without asterisks. The MAGA defense reflex, attack the press, complain about cancel culture, call hate speech a bad joke, is running headlong into a broader electorate that knows exactly what Nazi memes mean.
Republicans who want nothing to do with this mess are saying the quiet part out loud, it is not just morally rotten, it is politically toxic. Apologies that frame slurs and genocidal references as edgy banter do not play with suburban voters, nor with the young conservatives who do not want their movement defined by Telegram trolls.
Kolvet had a chance to set a bright line in a high-profile forum. Instead, he reached for the fog machine. The YRNF has at least taken the step of demanding resignations. The question now is whether the party’s influencers, and the politicians who appear on their shows, can match that clarity. Condemnation does not require nuance, it requires a spine but appears to go against their political ethos.
