A growing record of anti-Semitic rhetoric among Republican operatives highlights a concerning new trend in American politics. Once an exclusively fringe phenomenon, anti-Semitism spilled into the mainstream conversation of the Democratic Party after October 7, 2023, when Israel suffered the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. But now, the virus of anti-Semitism appears to be influencing Republicans as well. “We already have one anti-Semitic party. We don’t need two,” warned FRC President Tony Perkins on a Tuesday conference call with faith leaders. “Anti-Semitism is growing rapidly, and it needs to be addressed.”
The most recent installments in this trend have surfaced in the 2026 U.S. Senate race in South Carolina. In that race, two of the six Republican challengers to incumbent Senator Lindsey Graham (R) have dismissed calls to fire campaign staffers who publicly shared anti-Semitic content on social media. Graham called on both campaigns to terminate the people responsible for offensive posts.
In one incident, Evan Mulch, political director for Mark Lynch’s Senate bid, posted an image on X of a foot stomping on the Talmud, describing it as a “hate filled book towards Jesus Christ.” Graham responded, “When you step on the Talmud with a boot, I don’t think that’s American; I don’t think it’s Christian. I don’t think there’s any place in running for higher office for people who engage in that behavior.” When reached for comment, Lynch’s campaign responded dismissively, “It is unsurprising that in his desperation, Lindsey has chosen Holy Week to throw more slop against the wall.”
In another incident, Vish Burra, a public-facing member of Paul Dans’s campaign, shared an AI-generated video depicting Jews as scheming cockroaches with the caption “vermin.” Burra has also declared that the U.S. should drop Israel as a major non-NATO ally. “If you believe this is a pathway forward to victory in the Republican Party, I want to make sure that you’re proven wrong,” Graham declared. To this, Dans responded with his own anti-Semitic insinuations, “Israel picks Lindsey Graham’s staff, but they do not pick mine. I am not firing Vish Burra.”
In November, the offensive video prompted One American News Network to fire Burra from his position as the producer of “The Matt Gaetz Show.” Gaetz, a former congressman, responded to the incident online, “My producer Vish Burra posted something dumb this week. He knew it was dumb and quickly deleted it. I too have posted dumb things on social media without thinking — some I’ve deleted, some I haven’t. And I’ve had to pay some consequences along the way. Vish will too. I’m not the internet hall monitor of any of my coworkers (thankfully).” Burra also previously worked for former Congressman George Santos (R-N.Y.).
These incidents are not isolated. They extend a pattern of recent revelations in which young Republican operatives have reveled in extreme anti-Semitism. In a chat group exposed by Politico in October 2025, then-chair of the New York State Young Republicans Peter Giunta declared “I love Hitler,” while New York State Young Republicans General Counsel Joe Mailgno joked about “the Hitler aesthetic.” In the same chat group, Brianna Douglass, wife of a Vermont state senator, said it was a mistake “expecting the Jew to be honest.”
The revelations were so damaging that the New York Republican State Committee suspended its young Republicans group days later.
In March 2026, The Floridian, a conservative paper, exposed a similar chat group run by Miami GOP Secretary Abel Alexander Carvajal. In the group, Ian Valdes, president of the TPUSA chapter at Florida International University, declared, “I would def not marry a Jew lmao.” Valdes also renamed the group “Gooning in Agartha,” referring to a mythical civilization Nazi ideologues believed was the hidden Aryan homeland. In the same group, FIU College Republicans membership director Dariel Gonzalez called Agartha, “heaven inside the earth.”
After news of the chat broke, TPUSA announced that Valdes had resigned, and FIU President Jeanette M. Nuñez said a criminal investigation was underway.
Perkins, who formerly chaired the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, observed on “Washington Watch” that tolerance of anti-Semitism is often the first step to a general erosion of religious freedom. “Whether you go into Nazi Germany, Russia — you pick it — what we’ve seen historically is that the marginalization and the persecution of the Jewish community is the canary in the coal mine to religious intolerance,” he insisted. “And it’s not going to stay [in] that community. It’s going to move to Christians. It’s going to move to other religious groups.”
Because of this growing pattern, Senator Graham expressed intense alarm over anti-Semitism surfacing in the South Carolina Senate primary. “This is a campaign about defining the Republican Party,” he declared. “This is not about speech. You can be an anti-Semite all you want in America, you’re just not going to be in the Republican Party doing it.”
“This is not about my primary. This is about stopping something, calling it out, and stopping it before it becomes acceptable,” Graham reiterated during the Tuesday call with faith leaders. “Can you believe this is a pathway forward to victory in the Republican Party? I want to demonstrate that it’s wrong, and I want to do it in such a fashion that others will not go down this path.”
In opposition to those who want the U.S. to withdraw from its alliance with Israel, Graham insisted, “Israel doesn’t get America in trouble. Israel saves America from trouble. The radical Islamists over there can’t come over here because Israel won’t let them.”
On the call, which TWS monitored, Rabbi Yossi Refson, of the Chabad of Charleston, S.C., noted that South Carolina has a small Jewish population and an even smaller number of Jewish Republicans. But he nevertheless appreciated Graham’s stand against anti-Semitism simply because it was the right thing to do.
Christian leaders also expressed their support for Graham’s position on the call. “I cannot believe that any statewide candidate has not publicly repudiated these remarks and fire these individuals,” exclaimed Ralph Reed, chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “I am stunned, shocked, and revolted by the lurid anti-Semitism.”
However, Reed expressed confidence that, “if these guys are trying to get an evangelical vote, they’re not going about it the right way,” because “the overwhelming majority of Republican primary voters” do not hold these anti-Semitic views.
