By trying to name and shame Trump supporters, the ‘Trump Accountability Project’ betrays a preference for Soviet-style retribution over a commitment to basic decency.
If 2020 didn’t already feel enough of a Kafkaesque nightmare, the latest bit of depravity from the “hate has no home here” totalitarian left is a ghoulish scheme announced by three former Barack Obama and Pete Buttigieg staffers on Twitter last week called “The Trump Accountability Project.” Aspiring apparatchiks Emily Abrams, Michael Simon, and Hari Sevugan lauded the website whose stated mission is to “never forget those who furthered the Trump agenda.”
According to the now privatized site, whose internet archives were captured, anyone associated with the Trump administration, including those who elected him, staffed his government, funded him, endorsed him, worked in law firms for him, and who supported him in general, should be “held accountable.”
The site includes a comprehensive list of “known collaborators,” including U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, White House Chief of Staff Mike Meadows, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, campaign advisors Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon, and the 56 federal judges, including U.S. Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, appointed by President Trump. No one is spared: assistants, receptionists, stenographers, calligraphers—our diligent Comrades know how to name names.
The idea of punishing people who have supported Trump also surfaced among media types, including Jake Tapper of CNN and Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post. All of them have called for at least social recriminations, such as keeping the “guilty” from supporting themselves and their families through paid employment.
So what exactly are these Trump deplorable going to be “held accountable” for? The reasons cited are the administration’s purported assault on democracy, separation of children from their families, encouragement of racism, and “the country’s failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Is this reasonable? Has the Trump administration, aided and abetted by its staff, supporters, donors, endorsers, and even independent judges, produced so horrific an environment that, even as we enter our glorious post-Trump One Party era, we should implement a program of purges and punishment?
The allegations regarding democracy are preposterous. The Democratic Party’s various policies and tactics since 2016 overwhelmingly surpass the most exaggerated allegations of Trump’s “authoritarianism,” and the left knows it.
Also questionable are factually selective cries about children being separated from their parents. A border policy of removing children from their rightful parents is wrong and should never have been implemented. But the complicated and grim reality is that some parents are doing the separating, paying human smugglers to traffic their children over the border. Some don’t want their children brought back to their countries of origin.
Furthermore, this issue’s moral outrage is particularly disingenuous considering the left’s support for obscene abortion laws that butcher close to 1 million babies, give or take, each year. And these policies are racially targeted. Almost 80 percent of Planned Parenthood’s surgical abortion facilities are located within walking distance of black neighborhoods. Roughly a third of all babies aborted each year are black, even though black women represent approximately 7 percent of the U.S. population.
The claim of “antisemitism” is similarly ludicrous. Under Trump, the U.S. embassy was moved to Jerusalem, a promise made under previous presidencies but never delivered. A historic diplomatic accord was recently signed between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and, subsequently, Bahrain. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the agreement heralded a “new dawn of peace.” It’s no wonder that President Trump is the overwhelmingly preferred presidential candidate for the Israeli Jewish public.
As for the administration’s COVID response, the pandemic took everyone by surprise. Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi were still accusing Trump of fear-mongering and xenophobia weeks after closing the borders to China. Since then, and despite rapid mobilization efforts under Operation Warp Speed, Democrats and their media allies have consistently slammed Trump for not controlling a new virus magically.
Yet Biden has not yet been able to articulate what he would do differently, other than imposing a national lockdown. Considering that the most devastating economic impact has been felt in blue states where governors have stubbornly kept their economies shut down, this sort of strategy would be a calamity.
But none of this can get in the way of some good old-fashioned witch-hunting. How will these Trump deplorables be held accountable? A consideration of Soviet communist tactics offers some interesting possibilities. Farcical show trials were held to liquidate perceived national traitors and thereby eliminate political opposition.
In Czechoslovakia, the children of shopkeepers, professionals, and intellectuals were barred from higher education. As for the judiciary, Communists resolved the problem of ideologically suspect pre-war appointed judges by issuing decrees that subordinated the judiciary to state ministries of “justice.”
Proponents of Trump purges have proposed their own ideas. Comrade Sevugan tweeted on Friday that CNN’s Kaitlan Collins “reported WH staff are starting to look for jobs” and warned that “employers considering them should know there are consequences for hiring anyone who helped Trump attack American values.” So-called “pro-democracy” commentator Rubin tweeted that those questioning the election results and making claims of voter fraud should “never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position or be accepted into ‘polite society.’”
As if that perversity wasn’t enough, she appeared on MSNBC’s AM Joy over the weekend and argued that “it’s not only that Trump has to lose, but that all his enablers have to lose.” She added, shockingly, that “we have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party” because “if there are survivors… they will do it again.”
Evan McMullin, a budding Stalinist dressed up as a defender of the republic, proposed that “we should keep and publish a list of everyone who assists Trump’s frivolous and dangerous attacks on the election.” For the good of the country, we should “name and shame forever,” he said.
Not surprisingly, socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is totally on board with implementing this “accountability” agenda. She tweeted concern that “Trump sycophants” might “downplay or deny their complicity” by deleting tweets, writings, and photos. Fortunately for her, the lists are already being tabulated.
Had we not just spent the better part of a year battling a host of assaults on individual, religious, and political freedoms, we would not have believed such an outrage possible. Indeed, once upon a time in 2019, sane people on both sides of the political spectrum would have regarded this sort of garbage as a blatant right and basic decency violation.
Once presumably, normal people are salivating over the prospect of purges and punishment, a tactic rooted in communist propaganda: the enemy narrative. According to this pernicious lie, our very existence is under such threat by an evil adversary that the erosion of human rights and undemocratic seizure of power is justified.
For the Soviets, the villain was capitalism and the parasitical Western imperialists; for today’s Totalitarian Left, the enemy is the Orange Man in the White House and his racist supporters. Comrades Sevugan, Rubin, and McMullin are spewing the same bile that communists have used to poison millions: the evil must be stamped out and its enablers humiliated and exiled to protect our very existence.
We must pray that this roadkill of an election is cleaned up and truth and freedom preserved, so the circling vultures find some other carrion to gnaw. Resorting to Soviet-style tactics to intimidate their 70 million fellow Americans who support President Trump is despicable. And it only reinforces the widespread belief that the totalitarian left has officially abandoned any pretense of a commitment to democratic freedoms and the rule of law.