Joy Pullmann of the Federalist predicts that strategies used to hinder the 45th president will be employed again.
Anyone who has been watching for seven years — and counting — has seen the nation’s top Republican politician framed, impeached, raided, prosecuted, and now indicted by corrupt spy agencies on behalf of the Democrat Party. Their goal is to send their top political opponent to prison on charges they said were fascist to bring against their own presidential candidates.
After these last seven years, how can anyone not expect that any Republican who questions the unelected, Congress-defying security state won’t get the Trump treatment? If they can and will do it to Trump, they can and will do it to Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Robert Kennedy Jr., and anyone else who threatens their power. (Clueless candidates like Mike Pence and Nikki Haley don’t.)
Remember, even ineffective, regime-pleasing nice guys Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan were cast as a dog torturer and grandma murderer. But standard media smear operations pale in comparison to media functioning as a security state propaganda tool to frame dissidents for treason.
Any Republicans who think the security state wouldn’t frame others the same way it has Trump are in denial about the evidence repeatedly stampeded across their eyeballs for seven years. This means if D.C. Republicans want any president but Trump, their only ticket to that outcome is fighting back good and hard against his relentless persecution.
If the law is not equally applied to all, it turns into a weapon for injustice. If the powerful can break constitutional norms about legal equality for one man, they can — and will — break constitutional norms about legal equality for anyone else they want.
We’re already seeing this lawless weaponization of government bleed past Trump. The security state has also targeted Republican senators who have gotten a little too close to its corruption. …
