Ryan Mackenzie's communications director was a member of a college group chat where members joked about statutory rape, about Asian children eating puppies, about Black people not knowing their fathers, and about Adolf Hitler wiping out the Jewish people. That's what The Judge Street Journal reported on October 6, 2026.
The aide is Arnaud Armstrong. The chat had more than 80 members. And when it was exposed in 2018, Armstrong — then the editor-in-chief of a campus news site — kept on his staff the young woman who had posted the Hitler memes, because he had "confidence in her character."
Today he is the man Mackenzie pays to speak for him.
Who Arnaud Armstrong is
Armstrong has worked for Mackenzie since 2024. He is listed as communications director in Mackenzie's congressional office from January 2025.
If you've followed Mackenzie's scandals, you've already met him. He is the voice the office sends out every time something goes wrong:
- When Mackenzie was accused of inventing a private-sector career, Armstrong called it "passing mentions, mostly from third parties." We looked at that résumé — the only thing behind it is a real estate license he held for two years while working in politics.
- When Mackenzie's campaign quietly took his anti-abortion, gun and voter ID record off its website's Record page, Armstrong said "everyone understands that campaigns update their websites." We covered that, too.
- When a convicted fraudster gave Mackenzie's fundraising committee $2,600 three days before Trump pardoned him, Armstrong was the one who denied the office had anything to do with it.
- And when someone started deleting unflattering facts from Mackenzie's Wikipedia page, the account doing it reportedly traced back to Armstrong.
So this is not some intern. This is the person whose job is to tell the Lehigh Valley what Ryan Mackenzie thinks.
What was in the chat
In January 2018, Armstrong was a senior at the University of Pittsburgh. He was active in the College Republicans and ran a conservative student website called Polis Media.
That month, an anonymous account began posting screenshots from a GroupMe chat called "The Meme Stash to End All Meme Stashes," The Pitt News reported. It contained four members of the College Republicans and three people who wrote for Polis Media.
The Judge Street Journal described what was in it. One meme showed Black children excited about cotton candy, captioned "You mean I don't have to pick it and I can eat it?!" Another put Hitler's face over a photo of a concentration camp with a made-up quote: "You can't hate Jews when there is [sic] no Jews." A second Hitler meme read "You can't be racist if there is no other race."
All three were sent by Julia Henke, who wrote for Armstrong. She was Polis Media's Pitt content director, according to The Tab.
To be clear about what the record shows on Armstrong himself: the screenshots show he was a member of the chat. The Pitt News found no proof that he shared any images himself, and Armstrong denied taking part.
What he said when it came out
Armstrong's 2018 statement didn't treat the chat as a place full of hate. He said it existed to "facetiously share produce very inappropriate memes out of curiosity for seeing the what the worst of the internet could produce." (That garbled sentence is his, as The Pitt News printed it.)
He said the Polis Media writers "were not in such a chat to celebrate the images and the messages inherent in them." He did call it "clearly inappropriate and below the standards we expect of contributors to our site."
Then came the part that tells you what those standards were. Another member of his staff resigned. Henke — the one who posted the Hitler memes — tried to resign too. Armstrong said no. He told The Pitt News he turned down her resignation because he has "confidence in her character."
Compare that with the College Republicans, the club Armstrong was active in. They called the screenshots "utterly repulsive" and threw out all four of their members who were in the chat.
So the student Republicans removed all four of their members in the chat — Henke among them. The editor who now speaks for a member of Congress kept the person who posted a Hitler meme joking about the Holocaust.
Mackenzie's Israel record makes it worse
None of this would be news if Armstrong worked for nobody. He works for a congressman who has made support for Israel part of his brand.
The Judge Street Journal notes that Mackenzie is an outspoken supporter of Israel and that his re-election campaign has the backing of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its super PAC, the United Democracy Project. Pro-Israel PACs led by AIPAC have given him $74,280.
Mackenzie takes that money as an outspoken supporter of Israel. His top spokesman is the man who, in 2018, turned down the resignation of the woman who posted a Hitler joke about the Holocaust.
We found no public statement from Mackenzie about his spokesman.
It keeps happening
Mackenzie is not the first Republican on this site to hire someone with this kind of past. Mike Collins' leadership PAC paid $7,700 to a man who posted a swastika and an image of himself in what look like Klan robes. Across the people we track, we've found a chief of staff in a group chat with white nationalists, a political director with Hitler's SS as his profile picture, and a swastika flag in a congressman's office. Asked about it, they denounce racism in general and almost never say the name.
The race
Mackenzie is in a tight re-election race in Pennsylvania's 7th District, in the Lehigh Valley. In November he faces Democrat Bob Brooks, who spent twenty years as a firefighter in Bethlehem and leads the state's professional firefighters union.
Voters there deserve to know who is writing the words that come out of their congressman's office.
What the record shows
Arnaud Armstrong, Ryan Mackenzie's communications director since January 2025, was a member of a college group chat, exposed in 2018, with more than 80 members that traded Holocaust jokes, Hitler memes and racist memes. As the editor of a campus website, he refused to accept the resignation of the staffer who posted the Hitler memes, while the College Republicans threw out every one of their members in the chat, Henke included. Mackenzie, who is backed by AIPAC and its super PAC, keeps him as the voice of his office.
