A night out with the edgelords: Watching the Walz-Vance debate with DC’s young MAGA mob

DC’s chapter of the Young Republicans organization is a wacky bunch, even by the standards of today’s hyper-online Gen Z and millennial conservatives. John Bowden reports from their watch party

Journalists watch the VP debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance from the spin room at the CBS broadcast center in New York (Getty Images)

The tiny conservative crowd was clearly hoping for fireworks on Tuesday night as they gathered at a Boston-themed bar on H Street in the heart of the nation’s capital.

Instead, the few dozen attendees at the Washington DC Young Republicans vice presidential debate watch party were treated to a nearly two-hour policy-packed wonkfest, a back-and-forth slog where few lasting political points were scored.

DC’s chapter of the Young Republicans organization is a wacky bunch, even by the standards of today’s hyper-online Gen Z and millennial conservatives.

The group has regularly hosted disgraced ex-congressman George Santos as a guest of honor at their events, as well as his sneering number two, Vish Burra. They’ve also gone nuclear on Twitter/X against Santos’s critics, including against moderate Republicans in Congress who called for Santos’s ouster. Sources involved in the broader Young Republicans organizational field tell The Independent that the takeover of the DC chapter by Groyper-adjacent, hyper MAGA partisans has led to a cratering effect on their ability to field canvassers and other volunteers for local races, especially in the battleground state of Virginia.

The crowd gathered on Tuesday to watch JD Vance and Tim Walz face off on the debate stage seemed ready for some excitement to break out at any point.

But, it never did.

There were scattered “woos” and rounds of cheers during the first half of the night whenever Vance, who came polished and ready to deliver sharp talking points, was able to land a blow on his opponent.

It was a cordial affair between Vance and Walz on the debate stage (AFP via Getty Images)

There were boos when Walz brought up his own upbringing in response to an unrelated question — and even a few stifled groans when Vance did the exact same.

And there were loud jeers for the moderators – CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan – when the issue of climate change and its role in the devastating Hurricane Helene that has ravaged the American southeast in recent days came up.

The group turned to energetic hoots when Vance, minutes later, turned the issue of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) back on moderator Brennan and claimed that refugees seeking Temporary Protected Status (TPS) could acquire such approval to enter the US simply by activating it with an app on their phones. Brennan, thanking him dryly for explaining the process, did not correct him.

But the energy shifted, momentarily, during the segment on abortion and reproductive freedom.

Guests were visibly on pins and needles as Vance navigated questions about his past support for a national ban — something he denied supporting in one sentence, then acknowledged in the next — as well as barbs about IVF and pro-family policies like the child tax credit. But the Ohio senator escaped without any gaping wounds, and the debate pressed on.

“He handled that about as well as he could have,” one young Republican in a MAGA hat mused to The Independent at the bar.

But by the end of the first commercial break, it seemed like the energy had largely left the room.

So had some of the viewers, who began trickling out after it became clear that there weren’t going to be any onstage fireworks tonight.

The only actual fireworks played out at Dirty Water, the venue hosting the party, where the mix of post-college congressional staffer lookalikes mingling with slightly older attendees pushing the boundaries of the “young” Republicans’ demographics slowly turned their attention to shouted conversations fueled by an open bar.

That ended up being a recipe for problems. One beige-suited bro stormed out of the viewing party roughly 20 minutes before the debate wrapped, pushing past a small crowd of people as he bolted to the stairs and spilling a cocktail on the floor (and the legs of a few people) in the process.

It transpired that he had informed another MAGA-hat-clad guest that their views were “repulsive” and that he ought to “beat the s*** out of him”.

His offer promptly accepted, he instead apparently chose a quick exit.