OAN Guest Commentary – Ed Martin
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Democrats are up in arms over the results of Tuesday’s presidential election, claiming that it is only a matter of time before President Trump will jail his political opponents.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz also planted this worry in many people’s heads. On the campaign trail, they repeatedly said that this is what Trump would do if re-elected.
In reality, the opposite will prove true. Trump’s second swearing in will mark the end of a troubling time when the executive branch was used as a political weapon to take down political enemies and advance the party in power’s election prospects.
Trump has a proven track record of keeping the government free of such corruption and allowing departments, agencies, and markets work as intended. Remember that he refused to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her controversial e-mail debacle, despite how many from his GOP base were pushing him to do so. Trump argued that it would cause too much political division. If only Biden and Harris thought in the same apolitical matter.
Consider how they operated their Department of Justice.
Under Obama and Biden, the DOJ first weaponized an unverified opposition-research report on the alleged ties of Trump and his advisers to Russia. A years-long ordeal by innuendo for Trump, including an FBI investigation and a congressional impeachment proceeding. Of course, it all came to nothing, and was later proven to be a false narrative created by the Clinton campaign.
Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller with the Department of Justice also announced that the DOJ found no evidence of collusion between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.
In more recent times, the Biden-Harris DOJ indicted Trump for allegedly mishandling sensitive documents. However, those charges were eventually all dismissed, although the government continues—for now—to appeal.
Nevertheless, the Biden-Harris DOJ kept trying, later indicting Trump for allegedly attempting to overturn the 2020 election results. Yet again, the Supreme Court interceded, stating that for the most part, the government doesn’t have a right to indict a president over such matters.
These were just the most visible parts of the iceberg of the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to weaponize the government in support of its election efforts.
In a time of rampant inflation set off by its own spending policies, the Biden-Harris administration also repeatedly utilized enforcement agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department to scapegoat businesses for the rising prices. The goal, of course, was to take some of the heat off the party in power and pin the blame elsewhere.
For instance, the FTC attempted to block the merger of grocery stores Albertsons and Kroger because of “price-gouging” concerns. Then, the Justice Department also went after landlords’ pricing software for the same reason. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board called this an “attempt to distract voters from frustration over the Biden Administration’s inflationary policies.”
In another unabashed effort to weaponize the election system, the Biden-Harris DOJ sought to bully states into keeping illegal, noncitizen voters on their rolls. However, the U.S. Supreme Court intervened a few days ago to block this ridiculous, politically-charged effort.
As if this is all not enough reason to believe that the Biden-Harris administration is in fact on the side of political division and is against—not for—justice, the Biden-Harris White House and Harris campaign also sought to demonize Trump and his supporters personally—and repeatedly.
Harris herself—once the so-called candidate of “joy”—recently sought to label Trump a “fascist” in a carefully scripted effort, as she saw her early momentum fading.
Biden, meanwhile, became an attack dog long before his infamous comments accusing Trump supporters of being “garbage.” He said Trump supporters were proponents of “semi-fascism” as far back as 2022.
Harris’ vice president nominee, Tim Walz, has also consistently defended Biden by downplaying the outrage over the Democrat president’s shaming of Trump supporters.
Shaming and name calling are ultimately the kind of tactics people take part in when they don’t believe their political opponents are worthy of respect or fair play. So is weaponizing the government against them.
It’s hard to avoid thinking this all started with the former “elitist-in-chief,” former President Barack Obama, who also became a chief ambassador for Kamala Harris’ campaign. “Now the torch has been passed,” he said of her, self-reverentially, at the 2024 Democratic Convention in his hometown of Chicago.
Obama had previously revealed his demeaning opinion of blue collar and small-town voters and their concerns from the outset of his time on the national stage, in his 2008 campaign. “[T]hey get bitter, they cling to guns or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Obama said.
Not surprisingly, it was also Obama and then-Vice President Biden who began to turn the government’s power against the “undesirables” who held those “inconvenient views” — and the leaders who sought to represent them.
Texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page—two FBI employees who took part in the agency’s political investigations—revealed long ago the vast and frightening extent of Obama’s involvement in law enforcement matters. “POTUS wants to know everything we’re doing,” Page wrote on Sept. 2, 2016, referring to Obama.
Now, finally, the Democrat elite’s self-serving grip on government has been broken—or at least weakened. The reelection of Trump marks the end of one of the most partisan times in history and a restoration of the institutions that once made America great.
Ed Martin is the president of the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles and the Republican National Committee’s deputy policy director. In 2016, Ed co-authored with Phyllis Schlafly and Brett Decker the New York Times bestseller The Conservative Case for Trump. He is also a frequent consultant on various media outlets.
