OPINION:
No one will ever accuse Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Michigan Democrat, of subtlety or finesse.
Behaving like a Depression-era thug — “Nice little career you got here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.” — Ms. Slotkin made a clumsy attempt to intimidate young Republicans.
Speaking at the University of Chicago on Oct. 13, Ms. Slotkin, a frequently described moderate who endorsed apparent Brotherhood bro Abdul El-Sayed, called for prosecuting members of the Trump administration on unspecified charges.
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This is reminiscent of Lavrentiy Beria, the head of Josef Stalin’s secret police, who is reported to have once said, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”
It gets worse. Ms. Slotkin confessed that these prosecutions are intended to keep young people out of Republican politics. “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.’”
Translation: By persecuting Trump officials, we will scare off young people from working in the Trump White House.
Ms. Slotkin’s threat was just the latest instance of Democratic strong-arm tactics. The Obama and Biden administrations were infamous for intimidation and the weaponization of justice.
President Obama sent the IRS after the tea parties. The Biden administration used the Justice Department against critics of his COVID-19 policy, opponents of the transgender agenda and pro-life demonstrators. The FBI put out an internal memo warning that traditional Catholics were a domestic terrorism threat.
People had their personal information, including credit card records, seized. Opponents of the administration were debanked. Some lost their jobs for participating in perfectly legal demonstrations.
As a lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, the FBI raided President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and seized records that the president had offered to surrender voluntarily. The Biden administration tried repeatedly to put the once and future president in prison.
Britain has taken this political thuggery even further. There, a social media post considered provocative can get you a visit from the police and even a jail term for expressing unpopular views.
Ms. Slotkin’s ham-handed attempts at intimidation will not work.
Anyone who has the guts to be a Republican on a college campus today will not be scared off by vague threats of retribution for working for the most conservative president in our lifetime.
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