This election, Democrats have careened to the far left with calls to pack the Supreme Court, unleash a flurry of impeachments, and investigate Republicans. Few, however, have been as honest as Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.) about the purpose of such threats. Slotkin recently said the quiet part out loud in an interview at my alma mater, the University of Chicago, admitting she wants to deter young people from even considering supporting the Administration… if they know what is good for them. Slotkin seemed to go full Col. Walter Kurtz in the middle of the interview.
The Chicago Thinker, an outstanding student newspaper at UChicago, posted an interview with Slotkin, in which she describes the strategy to deter young Republicans from getting involved in government, at least in supporting the Administration.
Like many of her Democratic colleagues, Slotkin is promising that, if Democrats are given back control of Congress, they will unleash a tsunami of investigations of Republicans supporting President Trump: In the clip of the exchange circulated on X, Slotkin states:
“I want to look at these signature cases and not just focus on the president, but on the people who enabled him. I want young people coming out of school to say, should I go work for the Trump administration? Like that sounds fun. I might get an opportunity. I want them to be like, Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that. I want that deterrence message.”
“That deterrence message” is all too familiar to many Republicans. After January 6th, the Biden Administration used the riot to unleash a scorched-earth campaign against Trump supporters and groups.
In an interview with CBS News, Justice Department official Michael Sherwin explained that they wanted to send a message with the harsh treatment of Trump supporters.
He explained that “our office wanted to ensure that there was shock and awe … it worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C. because they’re, like, ‘If we go there, we’re gonna get charged.’ … We wanted to take out those individuals that essentially were thumbing their noses at the public for what they did.”
Of course, if Sherwin and his colleagues hoped to “Trump-proof” the nation, they failed in spectacular fashion.
However, that did not stop Jack Smith, who used his position as Special Counsel to seize the telephone records of Republican members of Congress while ordering carriers not to tell the members (some of whom were investigating Smith). We also learned recently that Smith collected information on over 600,000 Trump supporters and even tracked who bought MAGA hats.
Slotkin has been open about her desire to start a series of virtual show trials featuring Trump supporters to send a message to others. In a September 30 speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Slotkin compared the planned investigation to cleaning up Europe with what the Poles called “the Iron Broom”: “The goal here is to have a list of signature cases that go after some of the most obvious and harmful abuses of taxpayer dollars.”
To her audience’s delight, she dangled possible 20-year sentences for figures ranging from the former CIA officer named Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to even U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.
This appears to be a case of those abused becoming abusive figures. I criticized the Trump Administration for its investigation of Slotkin and five other Democrat lawmakers over a 90-second video urging military members to refuse illegal orders. While President Trump called the video “seditious” and “punishable by death,” I viewed the video as clearly protected speech. In my book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, I argue for the elimination of sedition as a crime.
Perhaps President Trump would have been better off adopting Slokin’s rationale and simply say, “I want them to be like, Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want, and so let me avoid participating in that. I want that deterrence message.”
Slotkin has now surrendered any high ground that she had after the grand jury declined to return an indictment in February. The problem, it seems, is that simply the wrong people or party were targeted in such investigations.
The interview is evidence of the devolution of our politics where leaders are now fueling an anger addiction and promising unblinking rage in government. With many of her colleagues, Slotkin has gone full Kurtz.
In the film Apocalypse Now, Colonel Walter Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando) explained the secret to his success in suppressing insurgents. The key was to act “without passion, without judgment, because it is judgment that defeats us.” In that way, he explained, he made “a friend of horror.”
As Kurtz said, “Horror [now] has a face” and it is seen in the rogues’ gallery of our politics of rage.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
What’s distressing is the Democrats are completely devoid of any program which transcends measures to injure other people and toss cash to people on their client list. The Democratic Party in our time has not one redeeming feature. You can read the words of partisans on this site and see what that looks like in individuals.
C.S. Lewis and Boris Pasternak come to mind.
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
There is a fine sentence in Bunyan:
“It came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said, and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house, he would sell me for a slave.”
There is a fine couplet, too, in John Ball:
Be ware ere ye be woe
Know your friend from your foe.
One last word. You may ask why I send this to an Australian periodical. The reason is simple and perhaps worth recording: I can get no hearing for it in England.
— Lewis, C. S. “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment.” God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, edited by Walter Hooper, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970, pp. 287–300.
The private life is dead – Pasha Antipov (actor Tom Courtenay) in “Doctor Zhivago” 1965 film
“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.“
I preferred the Mafia Democrats to the tyrannical Karens and ‘experts’ and Commies in the current cult.
Richard J. Daley was in most respects a person to admire.
==
Roosevelt, Johnson, and to a lesser degree Carter sought and made a lot of policy mistakes. Clinton made fewer, although a very unedifying human being. Those eras were qualitatively different than our own.
Turley: “Slotkin seemed to go full Col. Walter Kurtz“
Or maybe full Fascist.
Off-topic: Story that I haven’t heard in the news before today that is right up JT’s alley
https://justthenews.com/nation/free-speech/south-korea-traps-prosecutes-ex-trump-ambassador-comments-us-soil-american-media
Regarding Above:
This South Korean news source says Morse Tan totally fabricated the claims he made against President Lee.
https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/korea/prosecutors-reject-farright-claims-that-president-lee-jae-myung-spent-time-at-juvenile-detention-center/12787118
What is incredibly disappointing is the realization that these Trump haters who want Trump and his administration to fail really want the United States to fail. Many, if not all, who did not support Biden and his administration never wanted him to fail (even though it was clear that he was destined to), because that would have meant that the U.S. failed. Absence of support is not equivalent to wishing failure. The left initiated this downward spiral of selective political vindictiveness beginning with the IRS targeting Tea Party groups for selective audits (Lois Lerner) and have continued it for more than a decade since Trump’s campaign for President in 2015. Because the left started it I believe that this political vindictiveness can only be ended by the left when and if they clearly and concisely called off the dogs. However, Elisa Slotkin just demonstrated why this would never happen. The only potential good that will likely come from her commitment to encourage the mob to continue to go after her political enemies is the realization that the mob will eventually come for her.
Vincente
Estovir,
Trump has alienated virtually EVERY U.S. ally. That’s guaranteed to make the U.S. fail.
What are the practical implications of ‘alienating’ some collection of cookie pushers in the German foreign ministry? Brass tacks, chum.
Long time no see. Welcome back, This is Absurd
Slotkin and her ilk remind me of the Bolshevik Jews who put all of their faith in Stalin and were shocked to find themselves in Siberian labor camps
She would not hesitate to align herself with Islamist would do to her like Hamas did to the Nova festival attendees All for power!
Trump runs a fascist authoritarian regime. It needs to be opposed in every way possible. Of course there will be investigations and prison sentences. Of course we want it will know that collaborators will not be tolerated.
While the dem’s have a seemingly positive advantage going into the midterms, the truth may be very different. The fascist side of the dem’s was on full display during the biden reign of terror. They supported and implemented wherever possible every tool in the Stalin/Musslini/Hitler playbook. Freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, privacy, dissent, security and association were all under attack and badly compromised under the biden non-watch. The bizarre behaviors promulgated by the HHS/NIH/CDC/NIAID departments during the covid debacle destroyed the badly needed scientific inquiry and expert advice that could have led the USA out of the hands of incompetent bureaucrats and into the land of common sense. As a scientist, I lament the wanton and casual destruction of the rules of science during 2020-2024 era with previously competent MD’s losing their collective minds in the drive for compliant, virtue-signalling behaviors instead of using the method that yields a more certain truth. The Fauci diaries have given the world a glimpse into the hubris of these ossified bureaucrats and their fragile egos. That man is still pissed at losing out on the Nobel prize for his mediocre work on AIDS in the 80’s.
The Trump admin has had its hits and misses but is still preferable to the dem’s lack of any plans whatsoever except identity politics where their divide & conquer strategy, buttressed by the massive payouts to the identity slivers has fostered a climate of budget grifting that spares no one. The worst thing that can happen going forward would be to give the dem’s control over anything because, as they’ve shown previously, they just drive the nation off the road and into oblivion.
“He [Michael Sherwin] explained that ‘our office wanted to ensure that there was shock and awe … it worked because we saw through media posts that people were…'” Precisely.
Modus operandi: sending out anti-Republican, anti-conservative, anti-Trump messaging, then tracking results through the media.
Slotkin and Democrat candidates continue to use legacy/MSM media for unrelenting, pounding messages promoting their ideology, period. Picture this analogous example:
NBC, ABC, Washington Post, NPR, and NYT (as well as Google search results) (reminder: ALL independently-rated as Left to lean-left) sieve the national news daily to spin, slant, and broadcast only the selected news that casts Trump and Republicans and conservatives in a negative light.
They then conduct or co-sponsor a “poll.” The participants/respondents are obviously voters who are consumers of NBC,ABC, WaPo, NPR and NYT. The vast majority of national polls are conducted by left-leaning pollsters. And the leading questions (which would never be allowed in a legal setting) walk participants toward the door that the pollster wants them to go.
Just like Michael Sherwin acknowledged, “it worked because we saw through media posts….”
Is there a better way to “to deter young people” than to make sure that every thing they hear, see, read, or are taught —promotes one political ideology or message over another?
Lin,
Well said and an excellent analysis of leftist MSM and their slant for Democrats.
The upside, unlike leftist MSM polling, is ratings do not lie. We have and are seeing trust in MSM falling to all time lows, profitability falling, layoffs as advertising revenue falls with audience ratings. Meanwhile independent media is gaining. Fewer and fewer people are buying what MSM is trying to sell.
What the likes of Sherwin fail is there are real grass roots organizations like Turning Point USA that is attracting young people who are not interested in the socialism, illiberalism, the far left Democrats are trying to force on them.
Funny how it is that Trump called for, initiated and is now actually carry out retribution against Democrats and foreign born peoples who are elected federal government officials, and you people don’t see that as retribution? Thank God Biden gave out those preemptive pardons. Trump will do the same in 2027.
There is no question that the Democrats could overplay their hand. But, boy, what a hand they have to play. Trump and company have given them a royal flush. Jonathan, you were rightly critical of the Biden’s and the heavily politicized DOJ and IRS of the Biden administration. But you’ve had NOT ONE WORD to say in this blog or elsewhere that I’ve noticed about the unprecedented corruption of Trump and his family and insiders, with the DC swamp rising to a record flood level. I’m assuming this is because of your gig with FOX News, which reticence speaks poorly of your professed objectivity, which I previously admired. What have you to say about that?
Go back six to twelve months. I can remember multiple times when Turley was critical of Trump or his administration.
Moreover, thanks for personalizing what I just said about manipulative legacy/MSM media. Your perception of what you note is precisely based on the selective information you read or viewed via media. I may be wrong but I would bet that you have zero personal information or involvement in events depicted therein.
Has anyone at NBC, ABC, NPR, WaPo, NYT reported on the below/attached regarding Georgia Democrat Raphael Warnock? (I can think of multiple others in the Democratic Party)
“Allegation TypeDetailsRent-Free HousingAccepted nearly $1 million [from Ebeneezer Baptist Church] in housing without disclosure.False Financial DisclosureAllegations of filing inaccurate financial reports regarding outside income.Voter Registration MisconductInvestigated for late submission of voter applications while chairing the New Georgia Project.Interference in Child Abuse ProbeArrested for obstructing a police investigation at a summer camp.Custody DisputeAccusations from ex-wife regarding custody agreement violations.
Notice the reporting sources, New York Post and Fox News, (clear minorities in the media theater).
https://www.nrsc.org/press-releases/warnocks-long-list-of-underreported-problems-2022-10-14/
Because the ‘unprecedented corruption’ exists only in your imagination.