The creator of the Young Republicans group chat that leaked last year characterized his racist messages — including a text that said “I love Hitler” and another in which he called Black people “the watermelon people” — as “stupid jokes that offended people.”

In a Substack post published Thursday, Peter Giunta, the former chair of the New York State Young Republicans, admitted that while some of the messages in the group “shouldn’t have been sent,” many of the racial slurs and epithets he and others used were “no different than those you’d hear in an edgy Instagram reel or read on X.”

“The bottom line is that I made stupid jokes that offended people. I am not racist. I do not ‘love’ Hitler. I am not antisemitic. I am, however, a guy with a dark sense of humor who sometimes finds himself funnier than he actually is,” Giunta wrote in the post.

The group chat, first reported by Politico in October 2025, featured shocking Telegram messages shared among a dozen Republicans between January and mid-August of last year. The participants, including a state senator and the heads of young Republican clubs nationwide, used the N-word, called rape culture “epic” and joked about Nazi gas chambers.

In addition to Giunta’s “I love Hitler” text — which he describes in the Substack as a “sarcastic, deliberately over-the-top joke” sent in response to a comment about electing “the most right-wing person” to lead the Young Republican National Federation — he also used vulgar slurs to refer to gay people and women, and lauded a local teen Republican group for allegedly supporting slavery. The Politico report included an apology from Giunta “to those offended by the insensitive and inexcusable language.” Another participant also apologized to Politico, while many others declined to comment.

After Politico and other national media outlets, including MS NOW, covered the messages, the fallout was swift: The New York Republican State Committee temporarily suspended the New York Young Republicans chapter; high-level national Republican leaders condemned the messages; and several participants lost their jobs. Giunta was fired from his job as chief of staff to a New York assemblymember.

In the Substack, Giunta lambasted those responses, writing that they showed the GOP has “become the party of pearl-clutching.”

“When a crisis or scandal hits, too many of those in elected office jump to react — sometimes issuing the strongest condemnation, demanding resignations, and, in this case, treating stupid jokes as if they were a formal policy platform,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance tried to downplay the group chat and defended its participants as “kids.” But eight of the 11 participants whose ages were publicly available were between the ages of 24 and 35 at the time the chat leaked, Mother Jones reported. The outlet could not determine the ages of the other three. According to public records, Giunta is 32 years old.

Giunta wrote that he experienced “public humiliation and professional destruction,” as well as depression, in the aftermath of the reporting on the group texts.

“There were days I felt too anxious and too hopeless to be around my own family, days I didn’t leave my bed, and days I barely ate. I felt as if I had lost control over my entire life,” he wrote.

Giunta’s Substack remarks mark the first time a member of the group has spoken publicly at length about the fallout from the leaked messages. He wrote that he is doing so now because the first anniversary of the Politico story exposing the group chat is approaching this month.

He also wrote that he wants to “remain an active voice in politics, in New York and across the country,” adding, “the people who thought a single leak could permanently silence someone who spent 13 years building something real are about to learn just how wrong they were,” referring to his earlier years working in Republican politics in New York.

He also reiterated his apology, writing that he regrets “the pain that this episode caused my family and loved ones” and “the stupidity of putting certain jokes in writing.” But he said he does not regret “refusing to pretend that a private group chat of young political operatives trading memes, barbs, and dark humor was the equivalent of a neo-Nazi manifesto.”

Giunta did not respond to MS NOW’s requests for comment. However, he posted a story on his private Instagram account Friday saying he was declining the journalist’s request for comment. The Substack post was published on an account under Giunta’s name and shared on an X account bearing his name.

The post Creator of Young Republicans group chat calls racist texts ‘stupid jokes’ appeared first on MS NOW.

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