Text Messages Reveal Trump Nominee Said He Has a ‘Nazi Streak’ While Making Racist Remarks
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Politico revealed on Monday that Paul Ingrassia, President Donald Trump’s highly controversial nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, texted race-baiting comments in a group chat of fellow Republicans and even went so far as to say he has a “Nazi streak.”
Politico viewed the text exchanges from early 2024, including him saying Martin Luther King Jr. holiday should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell.” Politico reported:
Ingrassia made other racist remarks, according to the chain. In January 2024, he wrote of former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy: “Never trust a chinaman or Indian” and then added: “NEVER,” the texts show. Ramaswamy, the son of Indian immigrants, declined to comment.
A month later, discussing why some Republicans feel that Democrats make Black people into victims, the texts show Ingrassia remarked: “Blacks behave that way because that’s their natural state … You can’t change them.” He then added, according to the chat: “Proof: all of Africa is a shithole, and will always be that way.” (In his first term, Trump used the term “shithole countries” to describe some African nations and Haiti.)
Ingrassia made the Nazi remark in May of 2024 and defended it when another member of the group replied, “Paul you are coming across as a white nationalist which is beneficial to nobody.” Politico reported on the exchange from there:
When Ingrassia apparently said that “defending our founding isn’t ‘white nationalist,’” that participant pushed back, saying Ingrassia “reflexively went to saying whites built the country.”
“They did,” Ingrassia said, according to the chat.
That comment prompted the same participant to respond, “You’re gunna be in private practice one day this shit will be around forever brother.”
Ingrassia posted an image of paintings showing several Founding Fathers, including Washington, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, into the chat. “We should celebrate white men and western civilization and I will never back down from that,” he wrote, according to the chain.
Ingrassia will be before the U.S. Senate on Thursday for his confirmation hearing. Trump stunned the political world in May by nominating Ingrassia to the key watchdog position. Conservative pundit A. G. Hamilton wrote at the time the move was, “Insane and indefensible. The guy is a complete lunatic who has openly supported everyone from the Tate brothers to Nick Fuentes. Does anyone do any vetting in this administration?”
CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski noted at the time, “Trump just nominated Paul Ingrassia to run the Office of Special Counsel. Ingrassia is a former far-right podcast host and election denier who once shared an article calling for “martial law” to keep Donald Trump in office following his loss in the 2020 election. He’s 29.”
Ingrassia’s lawyer, Edward Andrew Paltzik, tried to cast doubt on the authenticity of the texts in a statement to Politico, saying, “In this age of AI, authentication of allegedly leaked messages, which could be outright falsehoods, doctored, or manipulated, or lacking critical context, is extremely difficult.”
“What is certain, though, is that there are individuals who cloak themselves in anonymity while executing their underhanded personal agendas to harm Mr. Ingrassia at all costs. We do not concede the authenticity of any of these purported messages,” added Paltzik.
