David Corn's Blog

It’s been a week of Donald Trump outrages—he barked at a female reporter, “Quiet, quiet, piggy,” and during a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, he denigrated Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who was slain and dismembered by Saudi operatives, allegedly on bin Salman’s orders. But perhaps his most horrendous transgression, so far, is his amplification of a call to execute Democratic members of Congress.

Yes, the president of the United States endorsed hanging senators and representatives.

This distinctly Trumpian episode began with a video made by six Democratic lawmakers who each served in the US military or the intelligence community: Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona (Navy) and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan (CIA), and Reps. Chris DeLuzio of Pennsylvania (Navy), Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire (Navy Reserve), Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania (Air Force), and Jason Crow of Colorado (Army).

Addressing members of the military and the intelligence community, these legislators noted that the Trump administration “is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.” They pointed out, “Like us, you swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution,” and they stated that “right now the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad but from right here at home.”

Then the Democrats presented a dramatic reminder to service members and intelligence officers: “You can refuse illegal orders.” In fact, the six noted, “You must refuse illegal orders.” They acknowledged that this could be “hard” and that “it’s a difficult time to be a public servant.” But they added, “We have your back.” The video ended with a plea to stand up “for our laws, our Constitution” and the message, “Don’t give up the ship.”

We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community.

The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution.

Don’t give up the ship. pic.twitter.com/N8lW0EpQ7r

— Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) November 18, 2025

The video was posted on social media on Tuesday, and within two days it had 12 million views and had made national headlines.

Republicans immediately howled about the video. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called it “Stage 4 [Trump Derangement Syndrome].” On Fox News, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said, “It is inconceivable that you would have elected officials that are saying to uniformed members of the military who have taken an oath that they would defy the orders that they have been given to execute their mission.”

And Trump went ballistic.

On Thursday morning, the president, on his Truth Social account, posted a link to an article about the video and wrote, “This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP??? President DJT.”

Trump went further and reposted messages from other users of his social media platform decrying the video as “treason” and “insurrection,” calling these Democrats “domestic terrorists,” and urging their arrest. Among the posts Trump boosted was one that exclaimed, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!!”

Trump was spreading a call for deadly violence against members of Congress. Then Trump put up his own post directly suggesting these Democrats deserved execution: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

Besides behaving like a tyrant, Trump was also showing his ignorance. Insurrection or sedition involve the use of force. It does not include encouraging anyone to disobey an illegal order.

This is not the first time Trump has endorsed the execution of a critic. Two years ago, he suggested that Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a traitor who deserved to be executed. And he pardoned violent January 6 rioters, some of whom had chanted “Hang Mike Pence” while they attacked the US Capitol.

Trump has long been a purveyor of violent rhetoric, and he has been accused of stochastic terrorism—the demonization of a foe so that they might become targets of violence. In recent days, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who earned Trump’s wrath by pushing for the release of Epstein files held by the Justice Department, has bitterly complained that Trump branding her a “traitor” has led to death threats against her. No surprise, Trump brushed aside a question from a reporter about violent threats Greene has received: “I don’t think her life is in danger. I don’t think. Frankly, I don’t think anybody cares about her.”

Elevating and echoing an explicit call for killing senators and representatives is a new high—or low—for Trump. For years, he has gotten away with horrific conduct that exacerbates and encourages political division and that could fuel violence. His supporters don’t recoil, and Republicans rarely say boo. Noting that Trump “just called for Democratic members of Congress to be executed,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), posted, “If you’re a person of influence in this country and you haven’t picked a side, maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side.”

Trump promoting a death threat should not be dismissed as just one more of his excesses. When a wannabe autocrat aligns himself with a call to execute political foes, it’s not just another Trump social media post. It’s another warning.

UPDATE: Slotkin responded to Trump’s death threat with her own video.

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A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

Ever since the reasonable woman lost to a narcissistic, racist, and misogynistic autocrat wannabe, the Democratic Party has been going through yet another painful round of the all-too-familiar debate: Should the party move to the center or adopt a more progressive stance to amass an electoral majority? This face-off has been recurring within the party for decades. For all the jawboning over the years, it has produced no consensus, and this fight is…boring. With the election results last week—a Democratic sweep everywhere—the debate is over. Or, at least, it should be.

That doesn’t mean there’s a resolution to the binary argument. One can end a debate without an ultimate and final decision. That’s what the Democrats ought to do. There’s never been a clear answer to the center-or-left question. And this election showed that within the party, lefties, such as Zohran Mamdani in New York, and centrists, such as Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, can each kick ass. Many commentators have made the obvious point: Candidates need to match the local electorate. Mamdani likely could not win statewide office in Virginia, and Spanberger likely could not excite the young voters who turned out in NYC for the democratic socialist.

There’s no need for the Democrats to continue shooting at each other and feeding the notion they have an identity crisis. The message is simple for them: We have a large tent and, dear voters, we offer you a buffet.

The Democrats reflect a wider swath of the electorate. That’s not a weakness. It’s a strength they should embrace.

Looking for a politician to identify with? We give you a choice: Mamdani, Spanberger, Sherrill, Gavin Newsom, AOC, Andy Beshear, and others. Take your pick. No single one of them must be anointed the leader of the party. Desire a fierce progressive who will (rhetorically) kick Trump in the teeth? There’s this young buck in New York. Want a savvy strategist with a mostly liberal record who strives not to be seen as too liberal? Check out the governor of California. Looking for less-splashy, nose-to-the-grindstone workhorse politicians (big on mom energy), see Virginia and New Jersey. The Democratic Party can be a choose-your-own-adventure party. It is not in disarray. It is diverse. It even has something of a unifying message—affordability—which can be tailored to different electorates. In New York City, Mamdani vowed to address high rents; in New Jersey, Sherrill focused on rising energy prices.

This is the opposite of the current GOP, which is no more than a homogeneous cult of personality tied to one man and his whims. It has jettisoned principles and policies to serve an erratic authoritarian. It’s nothing but Trump. Love him, love the party. Otherwise, you’re out of luck. The Democrats, in contrast, reflect a wider swath of the electorate. That’s not a weakness. It’s a strength they should embrace.

Indeed, the party will more tightly define itself when it chooses a presidential nominee. That’s a winner-take-all process. One person gets the party crown and campaigns for the highest office. In European parliamentarian systems, parties as a whole compete to gain control of the executive branch. Not so here. In the United States, parties must select and swing behind a single politician who comes to represent the party. That will happen in 2027 and 2028, and what’s likely to be a competitive and robust primary contest will produce the party’s banner carrier. Until then, the Democrats should not obsess over the left-center branding issue.

For about 60 years, the Democrats have been a center-left party. Both sides by now ought to understand that they need each other.

For about 60 years—ever since Southern conservative Democrats bolted the party in response to its support for civil rights measures—the Democrats have been a center-left party. Both sides by now ought to understand that they need each other. It’s my hunch—and you might disagree—that a fully left party probably could not succeed on the national level in the United States within its two-party duopoly. And given the profound threat posed by Trump and his cronies, the formation of a popular front that covers a wide stretch of the ideological gamut is essential. Last week’s elections demonstrate that the Democrats, with the help of independent voters, can build that.

Mamdani’s triumph was stunning, his win a tremendous accomplishment for the party’s left wing. He’s a generational talent. And now he will have the opportunity to prove whether a democratic socialist can successfully implement left-wing proposals—which should yield important lessons for progressives. Governing the sprawling Big Apple government, which too often has been prone to corruption, is a tough task, let alone changing its culture and injecting into it an ambitious agenda. Let’s wish him well. The question now is not whether a democratic socialist is good for the party, but whether one can succeed governing the biggest city in the nation.

In a way, the New Jersey race was more of an indicator of the current state of politics in America. Sherrill led Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a GOP businessman who had twice run for governor, by only a few points in the polls prior to Election Day. He had previously positioned himself as a not-so-Trumpy Republican. In this race, he campaigned with MAGA personalities and enthusiastically accepted Trump’s support. But he did not dwell on the president. A poll in October showed incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s job approval rating at 35 percent—lower than Trump’s.

The Democratic Party does not have time for navel-gazing. It’s a to-the-barricades moment.

This looked like a tight contest, especially since four years ago Murphy beat Ciattarelli by only 3 points in this Democratic state. Yet Sherrill won by a whopping 13 points. Jersey voters rallied behind this centrist Democrat more than New Yorkers flocked to Mamdani. And it’s hard not to read her margin of victory as a referendum on Trump. Though voters were dissatisfied with the Democratic governor and upset with rising food prices and skyrocketing health care premiums, they did not take it out on Sherrill. They renounced the candidate of the Trump Party. This is the election that Republicans across the country—especially those few House members in swing districts—ought to worry most about. Their biggest concern should not be a young socialist, but a working mom who campaigns as a mainstream Democrat.

At this moment, the barbarians are not at the gate; they are inside the White House, attacking democracy and deconstructing the United States of America. Millions of citizens are at risk of going hungry and losing their health care. The Democratic Party does not have time for navel-gazing. It’s a to-the-barricades moment.

I have no illusions. There will be squabbling over strategy and tactics. Centrists will still fear the agenda of progressives, and the progressives will gripe about opposition and obstacles posed by centrists. Look at the disagreement within the party over resolving the government shutdown. Yet these election results are a sign that that Democrats can win without settling this big who-are-we matter. Voters are not waiting for this debate to be concluded and a winner proclaimed. Few are interested in it. Precisely calculating an ideological course that appeals to a particular group of voters is not the key to Democratic victory. It can be a distraction. “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.” Mao said that. He was a dictator who did not stick to his own advice, but that’s the right idea. Different strokes for different folks, as Sly Stone sang.

These off-year elections—let’s call it the Ballroom Blowout—included surprising Democratic wins in Mississippi and Georgia, and there’s a lesson for Democrats. With Trump continuing his cruel mass deportations, holding let-them-eat-cake parties while threatening food stamps for millions, razing parts of the White House and showing off his new marble bathroom, turning tariffs on and off recklessly, doing little to address economic concerns, and ignoring court orders, the Democrats are presented with much opportunity. Continuing to argue among themselves is counterproductive. They don’t need consensus to succeed. They need authentic candidates who have something to say and who convince voters they will be fighters for them. Remember what a Republican president once said about a house divided. The Democrats have been shown the way.

In the final years of his life, Dick Cheney earned praise for breaking with his beloved Republican Party and defying Donald Trump, warning that Trump was a “threat to the republic.” That was commendable—and something of a counter to the efforts he made during his vice presidency to increase the power of the commander in chief and lay the foundation for the imperial presidency that Trump now seeks to establish. But Cheney, who died at the age of 84 on Monday, never addressed the worst transgression of his decades in politics and government: his deployment of lies to grease the way to the Iraq invasion that led to the deaths of more than 4,400 US soldiers and 200,000 or so Iraqi civilians.

There’s been much debate in the past two decades over whether Cheney and President George W. Bush, in the aftermath of the horrific 9/11 attack, lied to the public when they asserted that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had built up an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, was in league with Al Qaeda, and, thus, posed an imminent threat to the United States. Their defenders have long insisted that they merely relied on and conveyed bad intelligence produced by the intelligence community. But that case doesn’t hold up.

As Michael Isikoff and I showed in our 2006 book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, Bush and Cheney repeatedly made false public statements about Saddam and the danger he presented that were unsupported by intelligence, and they routinely ignored the intelligence that raised questions about Saddam’s WMDs and his ties to Al Qaeada—which each turned out to be nonexistent. Cheney instructed his lieutenants within the national security establishment to cherry-pick bits of intelligence—often unconfirmed or contradicted—that supported the claims he and Bush were spewing. For instance, he cited Saddam’s possession of certain aluminum tubes as compelling evidence the Iraqi tyrant was enriching uranium for nuclear weapons—even though government scientists disputed this conclusion.

George W. Bush looks over a brief with Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice outside the Oval Office at the White House on September 12, 2001.Eric Draper/AP

Whenever the question of Bush and Cheney’s selling of the war arises, their loyalists try to pin the blame on the CIA and others for the missing WMDs debacle. Langley, perhaps too eager to give Bush and Cheney what they craved, did, to a large extent, screw up the job. But Cheney was the guy who set that all in motion.

When assessing Cheney’s dishonesty, it’s only necessary to start at the beginning.

In the summer of 2002, as the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, the Bush-Cheney White House launched a campaign to persuade the American public that a war against Saddam was necessary. At the time, that was not a consensus view on Capitol Hill or among Americans. In fact, in mid-August, Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-La.) called Cheney and told him that he believed public opinion was not yet with Bush and Cheney and that he himself didn’t believe the “predicate” for war had been established.

“Don’t worry,” Cheney told Lott, according to Lott’s memoir. “We’re about to fix all that.”

A short time later, on August 26, 2002, Cheney delivered a speech at a national convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars in Nashville, Tennessee, which was loaded with hair-raising rhetoric. “The Iraqi regime,” he declared, “has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents.” He proclaimed, “We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons… Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.” He professed that nuclear weapons inspections would be pointless. He cut to the chase: “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”

No doubt. The veep said, no doubt. But he was lying. There was plenty of doubt.

Sitting on the stage for that speech was General Anthony Zinni, a former commander in chief of US Central Command who at the time was a special envoy to the Middle East. He later recalled,

It was a shock. It was a total shock. I couldn’t believe the vice president was saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD, through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program. And that’s when I began to believe they’re getting serious about this. They wanna go into Iraq.

Over the previous year and a half, top national security officials had repeatedly stated publicly and testified to Congress that Iraq was not a serious WMD threat to the United States. In March 2002, Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Iraq was not among the five most pressing “near-term” security concerns for the United States that he listed. Wilson noted that UN sanctions and the American military presence in the region had succeeded in “restraining Saddam’s ambitions” and his military had been “significantly degraded.” He told the senators that Saddam might have “residual” amounts of weapons of mass destruction but no growing arsenal. He made no reference to any nuclear program or any ties Saddam might have to al Qaeda.

In his VFW speech, Cheney stated with no ambiguity that Saddam had assembled oodles of WMDs to use against the United States. The US government had no clear evidence of that. The iffy intelligence that Bush and Cheney would later cite was still to come. But this speech makes clear Cheney’s intent. He was willing to exaggerate and dissemble to get his war. He aimed to scare and bamboozle the American public with lies.

Cheney, who had been defense secretary for President George H.W. Bush during the first Gulf War, was hell-bent on launching this invasion to finish off Saddam. And like his boss, W., he did little to prepare for what would happen after US troops stormed into Iraq and toppled the Saddam. That was as big a transgression as the false sales pitch for the war. From the get-go, this was an enterprise of recklessness and deceit.

Cheney, as has been widely noted since his death was announced, had a remarkable career. He was a White House chief of staff (the youngest ever), a congressman, a Cabinet member, and a vice president, as well as the CEO of Halliburton. He did much to affect the world. (He encouraged the United States to engage in torture.) But the Iraq war was his most consequential action. It caused death, suffering, and loss for so many and created instability in the region that resonates to this day. It was a colossal miscalculation, one of the worst in US history. But more than that, it was one big lie. It was Dick Cheney’s lie.

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

The appointment of Bari Weiss, the former New York Times opinion writer who started the heterodox Free Press website, to lead venerable CBS News set the media world in a tizzy. Since she had no experience in television broadcast news operations, David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, must have selected her for ideological and editorial reasons. Weiss had positioned herself as the scourge of supposedly woke and DEI-driven liberal media, presumably a stance that appealed to Ellison, the son of tech billionaire Larry Ellison, a Trump supporter who put up much of the money that financed his son’s recent takeover of Paramount.

Weiss’ first days at the network yielded worrisome signs. She asked senior staff at 60 Minutes, why does the country think you’re biased? This query suggested she buys the right-wing narrative Donald Trump propels about the media. CBS News, according to recent polling, is actually one of the most trusted news outfits, and the overall decline in popular trust in the media has been fueled over the past few decades mostly by a steep decline among Republicans—who have been the target of a concerted campaign waged by Trump and, before him, other conservative leaders (and Fox News!) to discredit the media. (A loss of trust among Democrats and independents has occurred but it’s been less pronounced.) Trump and the right’s war on the media has largely succeeded. And Weiss, whose rise to power has been a result of her crusade against the libs, seemingly accepts Trump’s terms—not a good sign.

Weiss’ inexperience, her embrace of the right-wing assault on the media, and her eagerness to boost her political opinions over her network’s reporting are all reasons to worry about her tenure at CBS News.

Nor were other recent developments at CBS News that the New York Times reported: “In the two weeks that she has worked at the network, Ms. Weiss has not promoted any articles or reporting from CBS News on her X account, which reaches 1.1 million followers…As a Middle East peace deal came into view, Ms. Weiss shared numerous pro-Israel opinion pieces from The Free Press, and an editorial that said Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, had failed ‘the Hamas test.’” She seemed more interested in opinion warfare than news reporting. And according to Status, Weiss has been considering hiring Fox News host Bret Baier and bringing back to CBS News Catherine Herridge, who was laid off from the network last year and whose past work included credulously reporting hyped-up Republican charges of Democratic misdeeds.

Weiss’ inexperience, her embrace of the right-wing assault on the media, and her eagerness to boost her political opinions over her network’s reporting are all reasons to worry about her tenure at CBS News. But there’s something else: artificial intelligence.

Larry Ellison is deeply involved in the AI gold rush. He’s chairman and founder of Oracle, a critical player in the AI boom, providing cloud computing and infrastructure for many AI applications and partnering with OpenAI. (He’s predicted, with enthusiasm, that AI will give us a surveillance state in which citizens “will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”) And David Ellison, like most CEOs these days, is looking to AI to turbocharge his company.

There’s much to worry about regarding AI—most notably, massive job displacement and assorted doomsday scenarios about the end of humanity. But at this moment, a potential peril is at hand: the end of truth.

AI may well be the biggest story of the coming years, and a news organization owned by a corporation with huge interests in the sector and run by a person plopped into the top slot because of her views, not her broadcasting know-how, might feel pressure on this front. But what’s most concerning is indeed the issue of trust—though perhaps not in the way Weiss has approached it.

We are on the cusp of a dangerous new world. There’s much to worry about regarding AI—most notably, massive job displacement and assorted doomsday scenarios about the end of humanity. But at this moment, a potential peril is at hand: the end of truth. You might have heard that before. The introduction of Photoshop years ago was going to make all photographs—and, thus, all news images—suspect. Yet we got on.

The threat now is more profound. A few weeks ago, OpenAI introduced a new version of Sora, its application that allows users to create short videos entirely through AI. You want a video of yourself reaching the top of Mt. Everest? No problem. Initial reviewers—it’s not yet widely available, but it soon will be—have praised the easy-to-use program and the realistic-looking videos it produces. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s leader, has proclaimed Sora “the most powerful imagination engine ever built.”

But just as Sora can manufacture fanciful creations, such as a dog conducting open-heart surgery, it can yield the deepest of deep fakes: videos of prominent people making statements they never said, of natural disasters or terrorist attacks that didn’t happen, of crimes that were not committed, or military strikes that did not occur. As the New York Times reported, “In its first three days, users of a new app from OpenAI deployed artificial intelligence to create strikingly realistic videos of ballot fraud, immigration arrests, protests, crimes and attacks on city streets—none of which took place.” The possibilities are endless—and damn scary. Faked videos could intensify or trigger conflicts, undermine elections, defraud consumers, swing financial markets, and frame people.

Sora has guardrails—for now. There is a watermark noting its videos are AI-generated. You may not produce videos of living people uttering words they did not speak. The production of videos with graphic violence is not permitted. But clever folks have already found ways to evade the limitations, and other systems won’t even bother with such restraints. Very soon our social media buckets will fill with AI slop. Much of it will be irrelevant and of no import. But there will be malicious disinformation produced to inflame, defame, mislead, and frighten for political advantage, for profit, or just for kicks. How will we know what’s real?

Who or what is left to protect reality? Who’s going to vet the AI-orchestrated falsehoods to come? This is what we need the media for.

In a less imperfect world, the government might be of use in this regard and monitor and address the most malevolent and consequential AI disinformation. But liberals would not want to see the Trump administration in charge of such fact-checking, and conservatives for years have viciously assailed and beaten back counter-disinformation efforts mounted by government agencies, colleges, nonprofits, and other entities, decrying them as Big Brother censorship aimed at silencing right-wingers. I understand their concern, for Trump has essentially turned MAGA into one big disinformation operation. It’s no wonder his allies attack endeavors to confront such propaganda.

Who or what is left to protect reality? Who’s going to vet the AI-orchestrated falsehoods to come? This is what we need the media for. Major news organizations will have to assume the task of quickly scrutinizing disinformation and misinformation, telling us whether the video of a tsunami heading toward the West Coast or another of thugs beating up a senator or one of explosions in downtown Chicago are legitimate. When a video appears of a political candidate confessing to a heinous crime or telling a racist joke, we will need to look to a source to determine whether that occurred. This should be the job of major news operations.

Of course, the big media outlets—the New York Times, CNN, broadcast news—tend to be for-profit enterprises. Who knows if becoming all-important arbiters of reality will fit their business models? But most important will be if their vetting is trusted. These institutions will have to be believed by large segments of the population—though there will always be people who will be unpersuadable.

As the AI Matrix approaches, we are going to need large institutions with influence and reach to help us prevent the truth from being wiped out by a flood of lies. And we will need somewhere to turn for guidance.

Thus, we return to Bari Weiss. She accurately points out that the news media has fallen on the trust scale. But she appears to have fallen for the false right-wing explanation: They’re too damn liberal. Though it’s early in her tenure at CBS News, her ideologically fueled appointment does not inspire confidence that Ellison (or the Ellisons) intend to direct CBS News in the direction where it could function as one of the essential vetters in this new and chaotic information ecosystem.

Like many in the non-mainstream media, I have long been critical of various aspects and actions of major news outlets, while recognizing they often produce wonderful and consequential works of journalism. Yet as the AI Matrix approaches, my hunch is that we are going to need large institutions with influence and reach (no matter if their audiences are smaller than they once were) to help us prevent the truth from being wiped out by a flood of lies. As consumers of information, we will have to learn not to accept the first impressions caused by AI disinformation and wait for confirmation—an exercise humans are not well designed for. (In the jungle eons ago, Homo sapiens could not afford to take their time to evaluate a possible threat. That could endanger them. Immediate absorption of information and snap judgments were essential for survival.) And we will need somewhere to turn for guidance.

CBS News is positioned to provide what might become the most valuable service of the news industry. Yet Weiss is not the obvious choice to guide it toward this mission. Perhaps she will surprise us. I’m rooting for what used to be called the Tiffany Network. But if we’re all left alone on the sea of AI slop, our democracy will drown.

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

It’s hard to define Trumpism without Donald Trump. So much of what Trump does arises from demagogic political self-interest, not ideology or well-formed policy.

He assaults elites and decries politicians for having screwed over middle America, while gold-plating the White House, grifting his way to billions, and pushing legislation that tosses big tax cuts to the well-heeled and raises the cost of health insurance for millions. He proclaims that politicians have betrayed the citizenry, but he guts safeguards that protect consumers, workers, investors, and retirees, allowing powerful corporations to run wild. He boasts he’s pursuing an America First policy, yet he’s spending up to $40 billion to bail out his pal in Argentina. Trumpism, as practiced and presented by Trump, is a hodgepodge—a mélange of impulses, insults, contradictions, and half-baked ideas, far from a coherent set of principles.

He signed an amicus brief that contended LGBTQ people were not protected by workplace discrimination bans. He filed lawsuits to kill the Affordable Care Act. He sued the Biden administration, alleging it was censoring anti-vaccine activism. He’s full MAGA.

But there are others who do a better job than Trump of shaping Trumpism into a coherent ideology that melds nativism and oligarchism. And they present as much danger—possibly more?—to American society as the undisciplined, erratic wannabe-autocrat who leads the MAGA cult. One of these Trumpers is Eric Schmitt.

Never heard of him? He’s the junior US senator from Missouri, a Republican, naturally. He was elected in the 2022 election. Prior to that he was the Show Me State’s attorney general. In that position, he championed Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election and supported failed lawsuits that tried to overturn the election results. He signed an amicus brief that contended LGBTQ people were not protected by workplace discrimination bans. He filed lawsuits to kill the Affordable Care Act. He sued the Biden administration, alleging it was censoring anti-vaccine activism. He’s full MAGA.

In the Senate, he has not yet become a national figure. But it’s clear this 50-year-old career politician has supersize ambitions. He demonstrated his ability to be a post-Trump leader of Trumpism with a speech he gave in September at the National Conservative Conference held in Washington, DC. It’s worth considering it in detail.

Proclaiming himself a champion of “national conservatism,” Schmitt defined this ideology as a “revolt,” within a “culture war,” against “the elites who rule everywhere but are not truly from anywhere.” Before explaining precisely what he meant by that, he assailed traditional (pre-Trump) conservatism for having gone along with the “Washington consensus” of foreign interventions, free trade, and pro-immigration policies that “undercut American wages, replace American workers, and transfer entire industries into the hands of foreign lobbies.”

This is standard fare for Trump acolytes who have tried to bend conservatism to fit into Trump’s mold. But Schmitt devoted much of his speech to the question of who is a true American. He derided those on the right and the left who have depicted America as an “idea,” noting:

For decades, the mainstream consensus on the left and the right alike seemed to be that America itself was just an “idea”—a vehicle for global liberalism. We were told that the entire meaning of America boiled down to a few lines in a poem on the Statue of Liberty, and five words about equality in the Declaration of Independence. Any other aspect of American identity was deemed to be illegitimate and immoral, poisoned by the evils of our ancestors. The true meaning of America, they said, was liberalism, multiculturalism, and endless immigration. In a  speech in 1998 , Bill Clinton said that the continuous influx of immigrants was—and I quote—a “reminder that our America is not so much a place as a promise.”

Real Americans, he asserted, have been betrayed: “Their true adversary did not live in the faraway sands of some foreign nation, but in the halls of their own government.”

Not really, Schmitt insisted. The foundational principles are critical to the nation, he said, but America was not “a universal proposition” available to just anyone. He told his audience, “That’s what set Donald Trump apart from the old conservatism and the old liberalism alike: He knows that America is not just an abstract ‘proposition,’ but a nation and a people, with its own distinct history and heritage and interests.” You see where he’s heading with this?

Real Americans, he asserted, have been betrayed: “Their true adversary did not live in the faraway sands of some foreign nation, but in the halls of their own government.” These Americans were heirs to a particular history:

The Continental Army soldiers dying of frostbite at Valley Forge, the Pilgrims struggling to survive in the hard winter soil of Plymouth, the pioneers striking out from Missouri for the wild and dangerous frontier, the outnumbered Kentucky settlers repelling wave after wave of Indian war band attacks from behind their stockade walls—all of them would be astonished to hear that they were only fighting for a “proposition.”

They believed they were forging a nation—a homeland for themselves and their descendants. They fought, they bled, they struggled, they died for us. They built this country for us.

The key word here is “descendants.” Schmitt was suggesting America belongs more to some than others. (In Animal Farm, the fascist regime declares, “Some animals are more equal than others.”) America, the senator said, is not a “universal nation” open to anyone who wishes to join.

After referring to the United States as “the most essentially Western nation,” he hammered this point: “We Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims that poured out from Europe’s shores to baptize a new world in their ancient faith. Our ancestors were driven here by destiny, possessed by urgent and fiery conviction, by burning belief, devoted to their cause and their God.” He celebrated the waves of European settlers in the 1800s, noting his own ancestors arrived in Missouri from Germany in the 1840s, and that it was the brave Christian souls who headed West “to build a home at the edge of the known world” who made America and—most important—bequeathed it to future Americans.

“We’re not sorry,” Schmitt said. “Why would we be sorry? America is the proudest and most magnificent heritage ever known to man.”

Schmitt denounced those who would dare take notice of the genocide of Indigenous people or other ills of America’s past:

For some time now, we’ve been taught to be ashamed of these things that defined us—to treat our curiosity, adventurousness, and ambition as a stain on our moral conscience. We’ve been taught that, by settling this continent and building our home here, we committed a world-historical sin, and that we should rue the day that our forefathers arrived in North America, and condemn their vision, their strength, and their will as an expression of something perverse and evil.

He added: “The American heritage is not a narrative of oppression and evil, but the unfolding story of our people’s pioneer spirit—a spirit that drives us to expand beyond limits, to assert ourselves upon the world…We’re not sorry. Why would we be sorry? America is the proudest and most magnificent heritage ever known to man.”

As for those who would raise questions about America’s glorious past—including those Americans who joined protests after George Floyd’s murder in 2020—Schmitt said, “America does not belong to them. It belongs to us. It’s our home. It’s a heritage entrusted to us by our ancestors. It is a way of life that is ours, and only ours, and if we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist.” Who is the “we” in that declaration? The descendants of the European Christians who claimed the West.

The fight at hand, Schmitt contended, “is about whether our children will still have a country to call their own. It’s about whether America will remain what she was meant to be: the apex and the vanguard of Western civilization.”

Schmitt’s speech was an articulate and sophisticated embrace of blood and soil. His message was that America is a land not for those who have come here drawn by its ideals and promises but for those whose ancestors were on the wagon trains and who conquered the frontier. American greatness is derived from the legacy of those people, not whatever values and principles a diverse and pluralistic society shares and honors. (“If you imposed a carbon copy of the US Constitution on Kazakhstan tomorrow,” he said, “Kazakhstan wouldn’t magically become America. Because Kazakhstan isn’t filled with Americans. It’s filled with Kazakhstanis!”)

In his celebration of American history, Schmitt fixates on a particular set of ancestors who helped form this nation. His story does not include the contributions of enslaved people whose free labor generated much of its wealth, or the Chinese workers who laid the tracks for railroads that transformed the country, or the Mexican workers whose toil and sweat turned California into an agricultural powerhouse. Nor does his narrative include immigrants who arrived later from non-European countries. He is focused on—shall we say it?—white people.

Schmitt aptly combines explicit nativism, implied white supremacy, purported economic populism, and anti-elitism into a neat package, and he’s a damn good salesman for this noxious brew.

Schmitt deftly ties his skewed history lesson to the grievances held by white voters of today, arguing that those who don’t accept this particular view of American greatness are the same folks responsible for the economic policies and decisions that have hollowed out middle America and left many Main Streets in tatters. He is integrating racial and economic resentments, with a dash of Christian nationalism, into a coherent and divisive strategy for prosecuting the culture war against them: unidentified elites, critics of American society, and…well, fill in the blanks.

All of this is present in the Trumpism espoused by Dear Leader. But Schmitt more aptly combines explicit nativism, implied white supremacy, purported economic populism, and anti-elitism into a neat package, and he’s a damn good salesman for this noxious brew.

He’s a crafty and disingenuous fellow who’s skilled at performative politics. Two weeks after this speech and six days after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where FBI Director Kash Patel was the witness, Schmitt used the occasion to describe America as in the grips of a titanic battle between good and evil, with the latter being a left that encourages political violence. He cited instances of violence committed by people with left-leaning agendas, but absent from his list were shootings and massacres perpetrated by those motivated by conservative beliefs, such as the killing of Democrats in Minnesota by a Trump supporter. He also ignored January 6, the largest act of insurrectionist violence since the Civil War.

Don’t give me this both-sides bullshit,” Schmitt angrily exclaimed. He claimed that political violence in the United States is happening on a “mass scale” and is “not organic.” It is part of a nefarious and orchestrated plot, he insisted,

the offspring of a dark clandestine system funded in part with our own tax dollars with a large network of foundations, NGOs, activist organizations, and front groups. This system lurks behind every radical leftist movement in our nation today. The George Soros empire has financed a vast ecosystem of radicals, all working together, dropping off bricks at riots, to unleash a tidal wave of violent anarchists on our streets and to prop it up in an army of researchers, experts, and journalists, and propagandists who downplay the political violence.

Schmitt’s fact-twisting—the claim that Soros’ organization supplies bricks to violent protesters has been debunked repeatedly but remains a right-wing article of faith—and his amnesia about January 6 and other horrific violence from the right show that he is yet just another MAGA fabulist willing to lie and misrepresent to exploit hate, paranoia, and distrust to score political points. Like you-know-who. But he is much better able than Trump to convey the ideology that animates Trump’s own political movement and that is the foundation for Trump’s march toward authoritarianism. That’s quite a talent, and Schmitt intends to put it to good use—that is, good for himself.

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

About a dozen or so years ago, a staffer for Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ultraconservative Republican from Alabama, reached out to me and asked if we could meet. I don’t hear from too many GOP aides on Capitol Hill, so I was game. We rendezvoused at a coffee shop around the corner from my office. The aide was eager to pitch me an idea. Shouldn’t liberals who care about American workers make common cause with immigration restrictionists? Fewer immigrants, he contended, would mean more jobs available for American citizens. And if these were the sort of jobs employers had trouble hiring for, those owners would then have to pay workers more—and Americans would earn more. How could unions and liberals not support this?

He was quite earnest and a tad nerdy, and he discussed this notion with a missionary zeal. It was clear he was not having much success on the Hill connecting with Democrats or Republicans on this. He was an outsider and reminded me of those proud libertarians I had met in college who were certain they had figured everything out and didn’t understand why others didn’t embrace their logic-driven ideology. I told the fellow that I was hardly a representative for liberals or labor but that I would think about what he said. Nothing concrete came out of our conversation. I pinged the aide a few times with questions about in-the-news matters involving the Senate, and he replied, usually with information that was not that useful. What struck me most was that he was so sure he had found the path for America’s future and that he just needed to persuade the unenlightened (like me) to see it.

His name was Stephen Miller.

When I first met Miller, he did not seem like a likely propagandist for autocracy. I guess you never know.

Years later, I was surprised to see him as a top commander in Trump’s MAGA army. Sessions, the first GOP senator to endorse Trump in the 2016 campaign, had brought him into the fold. Though Trump fired Sessions less than two years into his stint as attorney general, Miller remained in Trump’s inner circle, becoming a top enabler—perhaps the most important one—of Trump’s dangerous id and a power-hungry extremist guiding Trump’s crusade of nativism and march toward authoritarianism.

When I first met Miller, he did not seem like a likely propagandist for autocracy. I guess you never know.

These days, Miller, as Trump’s mini-me, has been paving the way for Trump’s war on dissent—and that’s a literal war, with Trump deploying troops to cities to do battle with protesters (who tend to be peaceful) and to show Democrats that he’s a strongman who can exert military power to seize control of their cities and states.

In remarks and social media posts over the past few weeks, Miller has declared that Trump as president has unlimited power; that “left-wing terrorism” is rampant across the land; that Democrats support violence against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, back “domestic terrorists,” and are a “domestic extremist organization”; and that governors, mayors, and judges who oppose and block Trump’s deployments of troops to American cities are engaged in an “insurrection.” He claims there’s a war raging in America’s cities due to antifa, ICE protesters, and hordes of criminals; he’s obviously attempting to establish a predicate for Trump invoking the Insurrection Act and expanding his use of troops within the United States to solidify his rule.

The Trump-Miller effort to delegitimize, if not criminalize, freedom of speech and protest has been embraced by Capitol Hill Republicans.

Miller was a force behind Trump’s recent moves to designate antifa, a decentralized movement, as a “domestic terrorist organization,” which Trump had no authority to do, and to issue a National Security Presidential Memorandum that associates a variety of political views—“anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality”—with “violent and terroristic activities.” As the Brennan Center for Justice notes:

This breathtakingly broad list easily encompasses everyone from labor organizers, socialists, many libertarians, those who criticize Christianity, pro-immigration groups, anti-ICE protestors, and racial justice and transgender activists, to anyone who holds views that the administration considers to be “anti-American.” Under NSPM-7, the antifascist label can be attached to any of these types of people and groups and many more besides, giving the government maximum flexibility to pick and choose its targets.

As the center says, much of this memo “is squarely directed at speech and nonviolent action by organizations and individuals protected by the First Amendment.”

The Trump-Miller effort to delegitimize, if not criminalize, freedom of speech and protest has been embraced by Capitol Hill Republicans. This Saturday, there will again be No Kings marches and rallies across the nation opposing Trump. Millions could turn out for this event—in a continuation of the peaceful demonstrations that were held in June that drew an estimated 4 to 6 million participants. And this seems to scare Republicans.

On Friday, during a press briefing held by House Republican leaders, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), the majority whip, exclaimed that the “terrorist wing” of the Democratic Party was “set to hold…a hate-America rally in DC.”

Emmer: "This is about one thing and one thing alone — to score political points with the terrorist wing of their party, which is set to hold a hate America rally in DC next week."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-10T14:25:31.189Z

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) got his licks in, too. He said the protesters would be “the antifa crowd and the pro-Hamas crowd and the Marxists.”

The same day, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said, “This will be a Soros paid-for protest for his professional protesters. The agitators show up. We’ll have to get the National Guard out. Hopefully it will be peaceful. I doubt it.”

Sen. Roger Marshall: "October 18 is when the protest gets here. This will be a Soros paid-for protest for his professional protesters. The agitators show up. We'll have to get the National Guard out. Hopefully it will be peaceful. I doubt it."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-10T14:41:54.779Z

On Monday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy chimed in, saying the No Kings rallies are “part of antifa, paid protesters.”

Sean Duffy: "The No Kings protest, Maria, really frustrating. This is part of antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question who's funding it."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-10-13T12:22:30.198Z

It looks as if the Republicans are running a disinformation campaign to smear the opposition. This Miller-like denigration of peaceful protest—commies! terrorists!—is deplorable fearmongering, which has become Miller’s specialty: depicting America as land wracked with left-wing violence and lawlessness. When millions gathered in June at over 2,100 No Kings rallies, there were no violent eruptions. But in Trump’s cult, Milleresque demagoguery is contagious, and conservatives who claim to hold the Constitution near and dear have no problem lying to denounce and undermine First Amendment–protected activity.  

It’s all part of Trump’s—and Miller’s—assault on constitutional rights and freedoms. Republicans, evidently worried about the pro-democracy protest this weekend, are trying to preemptively tar as extremists the citizens who gather to resist Trump and his assault on American democracy.

Miller, I’m sure, has learned a lot since he came knocking on my door, a lonely Senate aide seeking attention and across-the-aisle company. One lesson appears to be that hyperbole, lies, and demonization are essential tools for an authoritarian looking to crush democratic opposition and impose autocratic rule. But I doubt Miller has changed much. He’s still a zealot—but one who finally figured out how to transform his fanaticism into influence and power.

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

SCENE: An office at the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. One side of it is a glass window through which other offices can be seen. On the wall are a collection of citations for meritorious service. There is a plant in the corner. It needs watering. On the desk are framed photos of a smiling middle-aged woman hiking a mountain trail and of identical twin girls of high school age in front of a sailboat. In walks Special Agent HENRY DOBSON. He’s 50-ish, with a square and solid build. His salt-and-pepper hair is thinning. He’s grinning. He sits at the desk and straightens the framed photos. He picks up the phone and dials.

DOBSON [into the phone]: Shelly, Hank. They just closed the bank. It’s done. After five years. Five fuckin’ years. He’s pleading. The Brazilians have it wrapped up. Nine years, no wiggle. Pretty good, right? Now on to the next scumbag…What? C’mon, you can’t be serious. That’s not what I do…No, no, no…What do I know about street patrols?…This is nuts—.

A YOUNG AGENT pokes her head in the office and tosses DOBSON a sealed manila envelope.

YOUNG AGENT: Someone dropped this off for you.

DOBSON: Who?

YOUNG AGENT: Didn’t say. Woman. Lots of jewelry. Big sunglasses. Floppy hat. Skedaddled quickly.

DOBSON [into the phone]: Hold on, Shelly.

DOBSON opens the envelope, takes out a sheaf of papers, and starts to flip through them.

DOBSON [murmuring]: Oh shit…Oh, I said, “Oh shit.” Someone just dropped off a stash of docs. Bank account summaries. Spreadsheets. Prospectus…With a memo explaining it all…It’s crypto…Sham deal…Dubai and Antigua…Looks like a fake ICO, maybe a rug pull…$34 million…SEC filings, transfers, phone numbers…Damn, the whole shebang…Ever get a silver-platter case like this?…Yeah, it says who did it…A guy named Carl, uh…Hold on, just hold on, let me do something.

A list of Google results come up. DOBSON clicks on the first one. A large headline appears: “Crypto Entrepreneurs Gather at Mar-a-Lago.” DOBSON immediately turns off his computer.

DOBSON puts down the phone without hanging up. He boots up his computer. The wallpaper image appears. It’s Kevin Costner playing Eliot Ness in The Untouchables. DOBSON enters his password and goes to the Google homepage. He types in a few words.

DOBSON [loudly into the phone]: Hang on. Be right there. Just checking…

A list of Google results come up. DOBSON clicks on the first one. A large headline appears: “Crypto Entrepreneurs Gather at Mar-a-Lago.” DOBSON immediately turns off his computer.

DOBSON [to himself]: Oh shit.

DOBSON nervously looks around to see if anyone is watching him. He starts stuffing all the documents back into the envelope. He picks up the phone and cradles it between his face and shoulder and continues shoving the papers into the envelope.

DOBSON [into the phone]: Yeah, yeah, I’m still here…Oh, you know what? I don’t think this is anything…Yeah, I think it’s a prank…Yeah, the guys in laundering. They’re always doing shit like that…Yeah, yeah, should’ve looked more closely at first…But, please, Shelly, do me a favor: Don’t mention this to anyone, okay? Not anyone. I wouldn’t want them to know they got me…Yeah, okay, you’re the best…And, yeah, where should I report tonight?…Okay, got it. I know that Potbelly’s. It’s always real quiet around there…See ya later.

DOBSON reaches for a burn bag.

***

I don’t know if anything of the sort has happened at Kash Patel’s FBI. But it doesn’t take much imagination to wonder whether such scenes are occurring. The FBI has become a cauldron of vengeance, with scores of agents who worked on cases despised by Trump and his crew being canned—most notably, the gumshoes who pursued the Trump-Russia investigation or the January 6 insurrectionist rioters. Even bureau employees whose only sins were to be pals with agents who worked those cases have been booted.

Then there’s the absurd and troubling indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. Even though Comey’s decision to revive the Hillary Clinton email probe eleven days before Election Day in 2016 helped Donald Trump win the White House, Trump has been angling for years to take Comey down for having kick-started the FBI’s Russia investigation that morphed into the inquiry run by special counsel Robert Mueller. A US attorney and several assistant US attorneys refused to move the Comey indictment forward, contending there was no there there. So Trump forced out this US attorney, put in a lackey with absolutely no experience in prosecuting criminal cases (she specializes in insurance law), and—presto—he had his bullshit indictment of Comey. (I’ve been reading indictments for decades, and this slim two-pager is the worst and most amateurish indictment I’ve ever seen.)

If you’re an investigator at a federal agency, you’d have to be crazy to contemplate an inquiry that might involve an associate, friend, or crony of Trump, his family, or anyone in his inner or outer circle.

Comey is likely to beat the rap—perhaps easily. But this bogus act of retribution, the dismissal of all those FBI agents, and other get-even actions (such as Trump’s henchmen targeting New York Attorney Geneal Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff) are creating a chilling effect of Arctic proportions for all federal law enforcement.

If you’re an investigator at the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, or any federal agency, you’d have to be crazy to contemplate an inquiry that might involve an associate, friend, or crony of Trump, his family, or anyone in his inner or outer circle. You have 10 years until retirement, kids you want to put through college, parents that need home care—will you risk your job by looking at the possible misdeeds of a donor to Trump’s campaign or anyone with a connection to his crew, let alone Trump himself? Not even a former FBI director is safe. And Trump is now braying about going after Chris Wray, Comey’s successor at the FBI whom Trump appointed to the job.

Should you get a tip about possible wrongdoing involving anyone with a link to Trump, you’d be a fool to even mention it to a colleague or supervisor. Don’t put anything about this into an email. Find a narcotrafficker to chase instead—if you haven’t been reassigned to help round up migrants.

The Trump administration has signaled it doesn’t want the bureau bothering with whole categories of crime, such as foreign bribery or failure to register as foreign agents. Attorney General Pam Bondi shut down the task force investigating foreign influence operations. In February, the leadership of the public integrity section of the Justice Department quit instead of dropping the corruption charges that had been filed against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. After that, this section was downsized. That’s good news for dirty pols.

Should an FBI agent open an investigation that irks Trump, he or she would have to fear losing their job and more—possibly being harassed on social media by Trump and doxed by his MAGA army.

What all this means is that a host of wrongdoers, including crooked politicians and Trump chums, have a get-out-of-jail-free card—that is, license to cheat, grift, and crime with little fear of investigation or prosecution. And it’s a card that’s easy to obtain. In trouble with the law? Buy a million dollars of Trump’s crypto. That ought to keep the G-men at bay.

Should an FBI agent open an investigation that irks Trump, he or she would have to fear losing their job and more—possibly being harassed on social media by Trump and doxed by his MAGA army. And if a gutsy agent did move ahead with such a case, would the Trump Justice Department prosecute it against Trump’s wishes? Forget about it, Jake. There’s no percentage in starting such an inquiry. It will only lead to a world of hurt.

That’s the loud-and-clear signal that Trump and Patel have been sending to the FBI, while they shift agents to street crime tasks and ICE assistance. The Comey indictment is merely the exclamation point on the don’t-fuck-with-us message conveyed to all federal law enforcement. Special Agent Dobson is no fool. He knows the saying used to be that justice is blind. In Trump’s second term, it’s now justice is blind to the crimes of Trump and his gang—and if you dare take a glance in their direction, we’ll rip your eyes out.

Editor’s note: This is a developing story, and this article has been revised and updated based on new information.

President Donald Trump finally realized one of his many revenge fantasies. The Department of Justice that he has pressed to pursue his critics and political opponents on Thursday indicted former FBI Director Jim Comey. A lackey Trump appointed US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia brought charges against Comey after her predecessor—who was forced out by Trump—and career prosecutors found there was no solid case against Comey.

The brief, five-paragraph indictment is unusually vague. It alleges that Comey on September 30, 2020, lied to Congress and obstructed an investigation by “falsely stating to a U.S. Senator during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he…had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation.”

That’s it. But there’s a big problem with this indictment: That’s not what exactly Comey said.

First, some background. This alleged false statement supposedly occurred when Comey testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee five years ago during a hearing held by Republicans as part of their ongoing crusade to depict the Trump-Russia investigation as an illegitimate Deep State plot against the president. But his remark was not about the main subject at hand. While questioning Comey, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) asked him about something else: the investigation of an FBI leak involving former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.

That’s the portion of Comey’s testimony that is at the center of this case. But it turns out that the indictment is actually referring to another leak.

To understand the 2020 exchange between Cruz and Comey, it’s important to know what happened in the McCabe case. This leak occurred in 2016 when McCabe authorized other FBI officials to tell a Wall Street Journal reporter about a meeting in 2016 in which McCabe had disagreed with Justice Department officials about the handling of an investigation of the Clinton Foundation. (FBI agents had continued the inquiry after Justice Department officials had concluded there wasn’t much to case, and McCabe had believed continuing the inquiry was warranted. Eventually, no prosecutions ever materialized.) A Wall Street Journal piece that included a description of this meeting was published on October 30, 2016, shortly before the election.

Later, the Justice Department inspector general investigated the leak and released a report in February 2018. According to the IG, McCabe had told IG investigators that Comey had approved of this leak. Comey, though, said otherwise. The IG, citing a long list of circumstantial evidence, concluded that McCabe did not inform Comey that he had authorized others to share that information with the Wall Street Journal. Comey, the IG said, had done nothing wrong in this episode. Still at the 2020 hearing Cruz pressed the former FBI director on this. Here’s the full exchange:

Cruz: On May 3rd, 2017, in this committee, Chairman [Chuck] Grassley asked you point blank, “Have you ever been an anonymous source in news reports about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation?” You responded under oath, “Never.” He then asked you, “Have you ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton administration?” You responded again under oath, “No.”

As you know, Mr. McCabe, who worked for you, has publicly and repeatedly stated that he leaked information to the Wall Street Journal and that you were directly aware of it and that you directly authorized it. Now, what Mr. McCabe is saying and what you testified to this committee cannot both be true. One or the other is false. Who’s telling the truth?

Comey: I can only speak to my testimony. I stand by the testimony you summarized that I gave in May of 2017.

Cruz: So your testimony is you’ve never authorized anyone to leak, and Mr. McCabe, if he says contrary is not telling the truth.

Comey: Again, I’m not going to characterize Andy’s testimony. But mine is the same today.

That’s it. The indictment gives the impression that Comey made a remark during this testimony in which he said he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports.” But Comey never directly said those words. His response was: “I stand by the testimony you summarized.” The indictment, drawing on the question that Comey was asked at that earlier hearing, is putting words in his mouth.

But the indictment reportedly isn’t predicated on what was at the heart of the Cruz and Comey exchange, the McCabe leak. Instead, according to MSNBC and ABC News, the charges are related to Comey allegedly asking his longtime friend Dan Richman to leak stories to reporters about an FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton. That was not what Cruz had asked about.

It’s not clear how the supposed Richman leak might be related to Comey’s 2017 testimony that Cruz pressed him on. The question that Grassley presented to Comey in 2017 that Cruz cited was specific, referring only to “news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton administration.” Note that Grassley had mentioned the Clinton administration. Did Comey ask Richman to speak to reporters about the Clinton administration or a Hillary Clinton investigation? If the latter, Grassley’s question might not have covered that instance.

When Comey told Cruz that he stood by his previous testimony he was not addressing the McCabe leak issue that Cruz had raised. And Cruz, focused on the McCabe leak, was not referring to any possible leak through Richman. But toward the end of the exchange, Cruz did ask, “So your testimony is you’ve never authorized anyone to leak?”

Could that be read as an open-ended question unrelated to the McCabe leak and, thus, possibly cover any actions Comey took with Richman? And could Comey’s “stand-by-my-testimony” response to this query be considered a false statement if his 2017 testimony was not truthful? But what if his 2017 testimony—because of the specificity of Grassley’s inquiry—was technically not false? The case might hinge on all this.

In a video he posted on social media Thursday night, Comey said, “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent.”

At this point, it’s hard to have a full understanding of the case because the indictment is so vague and many details are unknown. But this case is likely destined to be bogged down in word games. After all, words and precision are crucial to indictments that accuse a person of lying to Congress. And in this instance, it is no surprise that the indictment is sloppy, vague, and misleading, for this is an act of vengeance and not justice—which is what makes the case so dangerous.

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

Following the horrific murder of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump has blamed what he calls the “radical left” for political violence in the United States and has vowed to demolish it. Of course, Trump is peddling BS when he insists the left bears sole responsibility for violence while any emerging from the right is excusable. But his rhetoric never clarifies: Who is this “radical left” Trump seeks to stamp out? His use of this term has been rather elastic, affording him the leeway to pursue anyone he considers an opponent or detractor.

Even, possibly, you.

I asked Perplexity AI to help me determine when Trump first began assailing the “radical left.” It could not pinpoint the original instance, but the chatbot noted that during a press conference after the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in which one woman was killed—the event had prompted Trump to refer to “very fine people on both sides”—he remarked, “What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right? Do they have any assemblage of guilt?” At the time, ABC News reported, “It’s unclear what he meant by the ‘alt-left.’”

Before this audience of Kirk devotees, Trump insisted Democrats in charge of big cities were aligned with the “radical agenda” of the “radical left.”

During a June 22, 2020, speech at a conference held by Kirk’s Turning Point USA—in the wake of protests against police brutality that erupted across the country following the killing of George Floyd—Trump repeatedly referred to the “radical left.” He hailed the attendees for refusing “to kneel to the radical left.” He declared, “The radical left demands absolute conformity from every professor, researcher, reporter, journalist, corporation, entertainer, politician, campus speaker, and private citizen.” He asserted the “radical left” hate “our history, they hate our values, and they hate everything we prize as Americans.” And the “radical left,” he maintained, was “waging war on timeless American values like freedom of speech, which is what we’re just talking about. Anyone who dares to speak the truth is canceled, censored, de-platformed, fired, expelled, harassed, abused, boycotted, deprived of a livelihood, or even physically assaulted.”

Before this audience of Kirk devotees, Trump insisted Democrats in charge of big cities were aligned with the “radical agenda” of the “radical left.” Bedlam, he said, “will come to every city near you, every suburb and community in America, if the radical-left Democrats are put in charge.”

As he campaigned for reelection, he turned the “radical left” into his chief boogeyman. A few months later, in his acceptance speech at the GOP convention, Trump, looking to exploit the Floyd protests, which in some cities had been accompanied by looting and violence, once more leaned heavy into this “radical left” pitch. He brayed that the “election will decide whether we will defend the American way of life, or whether we allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it.” He excoriated Joe Biden, the Democrats’ nominee, for not possessing “the strength to stand up to wild-eyed Marxists like Bernie Sanders and his fellow radicals.” He warned that Biden was a partner of the “radical left” and that “if the radical left takes power, they will apply their disastrous policies to every city, town, and suburb in America.” Trump was essentially saying the Democrats were a key component of the “radical left.” And it was everywhere!

In four years, according to Trump, the Democrats had shifted from being lapdogs for 1-percenters to being in cahoots with communists. Quite the 180.

Trump’s conflation of the Democratic Party with the “radical left” was a dramatic shift from his 2016 acceptance speech, when he had lashed out at Hillary Clinton for being the “puppet” of “big business, elite media, and major donors.” In four years, according to Trump, the Democrats had shifted from being lapdogs for 1-percenters to being in cahoots with communists. Quite the 180.

During the post-2020 election stretch, when Trump was conniving to overturn the election results and subvert the republic, he relied on this trope to whip up his base and sell his lie. He blamed the “radical left” for having rigged the contest against him. At the speech he gave on January 6, 2021, which incited the insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, he proclaimed, “All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing. And stolen by the fake news media.” Fact-checkers who vetted his social media posts were also part of the “radical left,” he said. And he told the crowd, “The radical left knows exactly what they’re doing. They’re ruthless and it’s time that somebody did something about it.” Put simply, anyone who had a role in the free and fair election that he lost was a member of the “radical left.”

Demonizing an amorphous “radical left” and linking it to the Democrats did not win the election for Trump, but he stuck to this line of attack when he ran for the White House again. On Veterans Day in 2023, at a rally in New Hampshire, he gave a speech that historians compared to those of Hitler and Mussolini. “We pledge to you,” he bellowed, “that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” He added, “The real threat is not from the radical right. The real threat is from the radical left. It’s growing every day, every single day. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within.”

After Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee in the summer of 2024, Trump blasted her as a “radical left lunatic.” Months later in an interview with Fox News, he raised the prospect of “radical left lunatics” disrupting the election and noted they could be “easily handled” by the National Guard or US military. He also branded Democrats like then-Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who led the first impeachment against Trump, as “lunatics” and part of “the enemy within.” He called them “more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.”

Trump’s goal is to cast as wide a net as possible to vilify his critics and political foes. If Kamala Harris is a radical leftist, then just about every Democrat is a radical leftist—and a prime target for their new Red Scare.

It’s no shocker that Trump’s use of derogatory and dangerous language is imprecise. He and his MAGA henchmen rail against antifa—but they can’t define it. (Does it even have an office or PO box?) Last week, he proclaimed that it was a “major terrorist organization” and should be designated as such. On Monday, Trump signed an executive order labeling antifa a “domestic terrorist organization.” But the significance of this was unclear, given that antifa is not an organized group and the president does not have the legal authority to declare a domestic entity a terrorist group.

Obviously, Trump’s goal is to cast as wide a net as possible to vilify his critics and political foes. If Kamala Harris is a radical leftist, then just about every Democrat is a radical leftist—and a prime target for their new Red Scare. Trump is trying mightily to delegitimize the Democrats and all political opposition. White House aide Stephen Miller recently snarled on Fox that the Democratic Party “is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.” He called Democrats “evil.” Anyone associated with the party is the enemy deserving of Trump’s wrath.

This is an old playbook. Since the days of McCarthyism, the right has endeavored to portray liberals and Democrats as intimately tied to radicalism or godless communism. Nixon did that in the 1960s. During the 1980s, there was a cottage industry of conservative media outlets and nonprofits that concocted elaborate wire diagrams seeking to show that Soviet-funded organizations were connected to left-wing groups in the US that were tied to mainstream liberals and Democrats.

Right-wing commentator Glenn Beck did something similar during the Obama years, with chaotic chalkboard scribbles and flow charts that supposedly depicted a vast left-wing conspiracy that ran from the far left straight into the Oval Office with predictable detours involving billionaire philanthropist George Soros. (A gunman on his way to attack the offices of a foundation at the center of Beck’s byzantine conspiracy theory was stopped by police officers and apprehended after a furious shootout.) And Sarah Palin claimed Obama had been “palling around with terrorists.” Now Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and their MAGA conspirators claim they are going to smash the networks of the “radical left” and everyone to which it is linked.

Trump grouses that he’s the victim of witch hunts every time he’s the subject of an investigation. He now seems determined to launch his own, as part of a huge smear campaign that equates Democrats with violent extremists. When anyone he considers a political threat can be called the “radical left,” anyone can become a target of the assault to come.

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

After the past few days of jabbering about which political party is to blame for political violence, consider this:

Joe Biden, September 10, 2025: “There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones.”

There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 10, 2025

Charlie Kirk, July 24, 2023: “Joe Biden is a bumbling dementia filled Alzheimer’s corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.”

"Joe Biden is a bumbling, dementia-filled, Alzheimer's, corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America."-Charlie Kirk (07/24/23)

— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) 2025-09-14T14:49:14.176Z

In recent days, MAGA warriors, Republican officials, and conservative bellowers—led by their bellower-in-chief—have repeatedly proclaimed that harsh rhetoric from the left is the main source of political violence in the United States and led to the murder of Kirk. Some MAGA blowhards have gone so far as to call for a civil war to avenge Kirk’s death.

Even when some Republicans dare to note that it’s time to dial down the fear and loathing, they refuse to recognize how much has come from Trump and his cult, trying to both-sides the issue.

The charging document for the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, indicates that he might have developed a left-of-center perspective before this horrific murder, but there’s more to learn about him and his motivation. Regardless of how that pans out, Donald Trump and his legions are hell-bent on gaslighting the nation into believing they are the only victims of the polarization that plagues the nation. And even when some Republicans dare to note that it’s time to dial down the fear and loathing, they refuse to recognize how much has come from Trump and his cult, trying to both-sides the issue. Look at what House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Fox on Sunday:

People have got to stop framing simple policy disagreements in terms of existential threats to our democracy…You can’t call the other side fascists and enemies of the state and not understand that there are some deranged people in our society who will take that as cues to act and do crazy and dangerous things…So members of Congress and all public officials have an obligation to speak clearly into this and calm the waters. We can have vigorous disputes. Charlie Kirk was an expert at that. He loved debate. But Charlie also advanced another really important idea: that is that he loved the people on the other side of that table. He was never motivated by hate. He was motivated by truth and love.

Mike Johnson: "People have got to stop framing simple policy disagreements in terms of existential threats to our democracy. You can't call the other side fascists and enemies of the state and not understand that there are some deranged people in our society who will take that as cues to act."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-09-14T13:24:02.388Z

How does being motivated by truth and love propel a person to call for killing a political opponent? And where’s the truth and love in assailing, as Kirk did, four Black women—former First Lady Michelle Obama, commentator Joy Reid, the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson—by saying they “do not have brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”

I could spew thousands of words merely quoting the hateful and racist comments Kirk has uttered over the years—no doubt, you’ve seen many of the clips on social media. And let’s not forget he was a prominent supporter, like Johnson, of a man who has for years baselessly claimed the Democrats are evil miscreants, communists, and radicals who stole an election from him and who are literally scheming to destroy the United States. There are no leading Democrats who have ever incited with lies thousands to assault the Capitol and beat the hell out of cops.

Show me a single speaker at a Democratic convention who called for putting a Republican to death. Kirk was a featured speaker at the GOP’s 2024 shindig.

Show me a single Democratic White House strategist or Democratic member of Congress or Democrat-appointed FBI director who has boosted an explicit call for killing a political opponent.

Kirk is hardly the only example of a MAGA star who has gone this far. In 2020, Steve Bannon called for beheading Dr. Anthony Fauci and then-FBI director Christopher Wray. Before she was elected to the House, Marjorie Taylor Greene endorsed social media posts that urged murdering Rep. Nancy Pelosi and FBI agents, and she expressed support for hanging Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The current FBI director, Kash Patel, reposted a video of himself taking a chainsaw to Trump’s political enemies, including former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff. (When he was asked about this hideous social media post at his confirmation hearing, Patel replied, “Senator, I had nothing to do with the creation of that meme”—a weaselly statement that did not address his amplification of the violent imagery.) In 2023, Trump suggested that Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, deserved to be executed. GOP Rep. Paul Gosar did the same.

Show me a single Democratic White House strategist or Democratic member of Congress or Democrat-appointed FBI director who has boosted an explicit call for killing a political opponent.

What’s crazy is that a movement led by an autocratic purveyor of hatred, paranoia, and bonkers conspiracy theories has not been held to account for its perversion of American politics. There certainly will be violent extremists on both sides of the spectrum. But far too many commentators and politicians relish both-sides-ing this issue, insisting the problem reaches across the partisan divide. Yet it’s not even-Steven. The leader of the Republican Party has expressed, embraced, and encouraged violent rhetoric and with his J6 pardons he has promoted acceptance of violent action—violent action on his behalf. There is nothing remotely comparable to this within the Democratic Party.

By not fixating on the brazen hypocrisy, Democrats and the mainstream media permit those whose politics have been based on demonizing Democrats to escape accountability.

It’s a failure of the commentariat and the Democratic Party that Trump and the Republicans have been able to get away with it. Elon Musk and Stephen Miller incessantly try to brand the left as the party of violence and murder, and they face little opprobrium for that. Democrats and progressives have the better (and a truthful) case that Trump and the MAGA right fuel extremism and hate. But they generally have not found an effective way to land that argument.

By failing to constantly highlight and slam the extremist rhetoric of the right, they have created space for it and allowed it to become normalized. And now, by not fixating on the brazen hypocrisy of GOP cries of both-sides-do-it, Democrats and the mainstream media permit those whose politics have been based on demonizing Democrats to escape accountability, and this also helps wily Trumpists limit a potent and necessary tactic for Democrats: calling out Trump as a fascist threat to America. Such talk, Trump and his crew contend, is reckless and causes violence and could be criminal. Their goal is to stifle criticism and perhaps impose a clampdown on opposition to Trump.

Countering the GOP exploitation and embrace of extremism is not easy. For decades, stretching back to McCarthyism, vilifying Democrats and liberals as anti-God, anti-family, anti-America has been an essential part of Republican strategy. It’s how the party has been able to convince millions of Americans to vote for candidates who oppose raising wages for workers, providing health coverage to those without, strengthening social welfare programs, enhancing environmental protections, restraining corporate power, and limiting tax cuts for the wealthy. Newt Gingrich advised his Republican comrades to deride Democrats as “traitors” and perilous for children. Sarah Palin called Barack Obama a pal of terrorists and a dangerous socialist. Glenn Beck said Obama planned to wreck the economy so he could become a dictator. Trump came along and turned the volume up to 11. (See my American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy.)

The best way to address the sickness of political violence is not with anodyne blather. The remedy must be based on a clear vision of the cause.