Obama and Slotkin: It’s never hypocrisy when Democrats do it

 by Andrea Widburg

Two Democrats have spoken in the last few days about political prosecutions. One is that party solon, Barack Obama, who defended Ilhan Omar by insisting that no true democracy would ever bring the government’s police powers to bear against a political opponent; the other is from Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D. Michigan), threatening all Republicans with the government’s police powers to dissuade young conservatives from a future in government.

These two Democrat representatives see no tension between these two statements because, as we all know, it’s never hypocrisy when Democrats do it. Or as the old saying goes, if Democrats didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all.

We’ll start with Obama, issuing one of his banal, pontifical statements about the purity of democracy and making it clear that, by contrast, the investigation into Ilhan Omar (including executing a search warrant that a Democrat judge okayed) is a totalitarian attack on that purity:

Here’s the rest, and I’ve highlighted my favorite part at the end:

... why this is so appalling, it’s important to know the facts. Congresswoman Omar came to this country with her father when she was 12 years old. Five years later, her father became a naturalized citizen. If Ilhan had been 18 at the time, she would have had to apply for citizenship separately. But because she was 17, she became a naturalized citizen automatically.

Congresswoman Omar went on to graduate from college, work as a community organizer, become the first Somali-American legislator elected to public office in the U.S., and win a seat in Congress. There, she has been one of the Trump Administration’s fiercest critics, which has led the president to repeatedly single her out as someone who he believes does not belong in this country.

Now the Administration is actively trying to deport Congresswoman Omar, seemingly based solely on the unsubstantiated theory that she was actually 18 when her father was naturalized, and therefore is not a citizen. Federal agents have raided her home, confiscated personal records, and seized her phone — all to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago that will somehow make their case.

Think about that. The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president. And it’s not the first time this has happened. Under President Trump, the Justice Department has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies — from the Attorney General of New York, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve.

 

In those cases, the prosecutions either stalled or were dismissed for having no basis in law, and the same is likely to happen in this case. But not before Congresswoman Omar’s life has been turned upside down, her legal bills have piled up, and she’s been forced to spend time fighting unsubstantiated charges instead of serving the people of Minnesota.

The fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same. (Emphasis mine.)

God! That man is so boring. How he could have a reputation as a great orator... But I digress.

Many were quick to point out a certain...ummm...double standard behind Obama’s high-minded statements. One example will suffice:

But what made the hypocrisy behind Obama’s pomposity so perfect was learning what Slotkin said at an event at the University of Chicago. Michigan’s Democrat Senator has big dreams when it comes to weaponizing the government against her political opponents. She doesn’t want to stop with taking down her opponents; she wants to destroy the party root and branch by making it clear to young people that they, too, will be destroyed if they engage in Republican politics:

In the video, Slotkin says:

So that’s what I’m saying. I want to look at these signature cases and not just focus on the president, but on the people who enabled him. I want young people coming out of school to say, should I go work for the Trump administration? Like, that sounds fun. I might get an opportunity. I want them to be. like, Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want. And so let me avoid participating in that. I want that deterrence message.

Remember: For Democrats, the only fixed principle is to attain and then keep power. Anything in service of that goal is valid. The means will always justify the end. Or as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan famously stated in pursuit of his own fixed principle (a renewed Ottoman caliphate), “Democracy is like a streetcar [or train].  When you come to your stop, you get off.”

That’s it; that’s all democracy is to totalitarians of any stripe. The trick, of course, is to beat them back without ourselves becoming as immoral and hypocritical as they are. The one thing we cannot do—and President Trump fully understands this—is show any weakness.  

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/10/obama-and-slotkin-it-s-never-hypocrisy-when-democrats-do-it/