Exposed Nazi jokes trigger massive headache for Texas Republicans

A number of lawmakers and aspiring lawmakers in both parties have resigned in disgrace recently, from Maine’s former Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner to Texas’ former Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales. As a result of the latter’s resignation, Texas Republicans are now rallying behind YouTuber Brandon Herrera as his successor — but his history of offensive jokes is making that difficult to do.

“A self-described gun-rights absolutist and YouTuber known for his inflammatory humor, Mr. Herrera, 30, was initially opposed this year by both Mr. Johnson and President Trump as he challenged the district’s Republican incumbent, Tony Gonzales, for a second straight time,” reported The New York Times' Bayliss Wagner on Sunday. “Mr. Gonzales and his allies spent millions painting Mr. Herrera as extreme, highlighting old videos in which he made wildly offensive jokes like saying that a Nazi-era submachine gun was ‘the original ghetto blaster’ and ‘Hitler’s street sweeper.’”

He added, “But after a sexual misconduct scandal forced Mr. Gonzales out of the race and then out of Congress this year, top Republicans quickly closed ranks around Mr. Herrera.”

Wagner added that there is a controversial July 2022 video of Herrera in which he “used crude language to insult Shannon Watts, who founded the gun-control group Moms Demand Action after the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012.” His upcoming opponent in the congressional election, Democrat Katy Padilla Stout, described Herrera as a result of those remarks as “not the type of person you want making decisions for you and your children.”

Padilla Stout “has also pointed to a video of Mr. Herrera highlighting his ownership of a 1939 English edition of ‘Mein Kampf,’ and has circulated clips of him joking about Nazi atrocities against Jews,” Wagner wrote. “In the interview, Mr. Herrera vehemently denied that he was antisemitic, and said he owned an annotated copy of ‘Mein Kampf’ as part of a historical book collection.”

The journalist further reported, “Yehuda Remer, a Second Amendment activist who has known Mr. Herrera for a decade and is Orthodox Jewish, said the idea that Mr. Herrera was a Nazi was preposterous. ‘If Brandon was actually antisemitic, he wouldn’t have helped me along my journey, and continued to help me,’ Mr. Remer said.”

As far back as 2024, Herrera was a controversial figure. He infamously joked at that time that Trump’s then-17-year-old son Barron was in real life “like nine feet tall” and, imitating Barron Trump’s voice, mocked him for supposedly saying things like “daddy is coming, daddy is angry."