GEOFF BENNETT: Fallout is growing after a Politico investigation revealed offensive and vile text messages exchanged in a private Young Republicans group chat.

The report details racist, homophobic and antisemitic language shared among about a dozen members over several months.

To talk more about what the messages reveal and how party leaders are responding, we're joined now by Politico reporter Emily Ngo, who broke the story.

Thanks for being with us.

EMILY NGO, Politico: Yes, thank you for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: So we have screenshots of these messages in question, based on your reporting.

Some of what's on screen here includes racist and antisemitic slurs, homophobic, sexist messages.

There's talk of putting political opponents in gas chambers, threats of rape and violence.

This is just a glimpse of what you uncovered across thousands of Telegram messages.

I understand several of the people involved have already lost their jobs.

What more can you tell us about the fallout and who's been affected?

EMILY NGO: Right.

The fallout has been vast.

The story and our reporting has reverberated widely across the nation.

By our most recent count, we have eight of the 12 members of this chat that as you said is just filled with racist epithets and gay slurs and references to violence are out of their jobs so.

When we started our reporting, started making the calls after laying out some of these messages in our drafts, two preemptively were fired from their jobs or had a job offer rescinded.

And pretty soon after we published, we saw that others lost their jobs too.

GEOFF BENNETT: And the response has reached the highest levels, to include the White House.

Here's with the vice president, J.D.

Vance, said about this yesterday.

J.D.

VANCE, Vice President of the United States: 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 cause to ruin their lives.

GEOFF BENNETT: So people can read your reporting and decide for themselves if these were kids telling stupid jokes.

But who were the people in this chat and what positions did they hold within Young Republicans?

EMILY NGO: Right.

So this is a slate of a Young Republican club of leaders who were in positions of power and influence.

By Young Republicans, we're not talking about kids here.

We're talking about a membership that is as old as 40, so, by and large, could be the vice president's peers and peers to a lot of folks who are working on the Hill in Congress.

We had top aides to New York state legislatures.

We had a sitting state senator from Vermont.

And we just had folks who were poised to be the next generation of Republican leaders.

And we positioned our story and our reporting as this is how Young Republicans are talking when they don't think anyone is listening.

This is how they talk in private.

This is the speech of Republicans today who are going to be the leaders of the party tomorrow.

GEOFF BENNETT: Some Republicans have condemned these messages outright.

Others are trying to shift the focus, citing the leaked text from the Virginia Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones, who appeared to threaten a Republican lawmaker.

How are GOP leaders for the most part framing this moment?

EMILY NGO: So it varies, of course, but we see now -- and it's to be expected in this political climate -- a lot of congressional Democrats and New York Democrats, including Governor Kathy Hochul, who are seizing on this and capitalizing on this to use against their Republican rivals, including those who immediately condemned these text messages.

But with this latest set of remarks from Vice President J.D.

Vance, I find that I'm asking now whether there is a sort of permission structure being established slowly and steadily to allow some of these Republican leaders to excuse this behavior or at least -- at the very least question why Democrats aren't condemning similar violent language from their camp, but particularly from Jones, as you say, in Virginia.

GEOFF BENNETT: Tell me more about that.

Based on your reporting and the conversations you have had connected to this investigative piece, to what extent has the current Trump era normalized or even emboldened the racist, homophobic, sexist language and attitudes among some young conservatives?

EMILY NGO: Right.

So, in reading these 2,900 pages of private Telegram chat messages, my colleague Jason Beeferman and I didn't just report on what was in them.

And I will note that we just -- we read the entire thing, scoured the entire thing to make sure some of these epithets weren't one-offs and to see whether anyone was pushing back.

That was not the case.

These are jokes, dark humor, sort of a casual kind of cruelty that were repeated over and over again in a pattern.

And we put them in the context of what's happening now in the political climate, where people are at each other's throats, where, in social media, on podcasts, including very, very widely listened to, watched podcasts, and very popular hosts, this language is being echoed, it's being exemplified.

They're not getting this from nowhere.

And sort of it's been OK in some stratospheres, when it really shouldn't be.

GEOFF BENNETT: Emily Ngo of Politico, thanks again for joining us.

EMILY NGO: Thank you.