In an article published Friday in “The Stream,” a religious-right platform founded by televangelist James Robison, senior editor John Zmirak and co-author Jason Jones called for thousands of Trump opponents to “pay a brutal price” for what they claimed has been the unjust persecution of Jan. 6, 2021 protesters and “those who reported the facts about the 2020 election”:
- Courageous attorneys like Sidney Powell, Rudolph Giuliani and John Eastman — whose careers and finances have been devasted by vicious, incessant lawfare.
- Honest election workers such as Tina Peters, who faced vicious prosecution for doing their jobs.
- Truthtellers such as Eric Metaxas, Naomi Wolf, Dinesh D’Souza, David Clements, Mike Lindell, Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Gen. Mike Flynn, Emerald Robinson, Gregory Stenstrom, Leah Hoopes, and countless others — who faced vindictive lawsuits by billion-dollar corporations, lost jobs and income, boycotts, debanking, and in some cases lawless prosecution by our corrupted institutions.
Jones and Zmirak wrote:
It’s not just that these good people need to get their good names and livelihoods back. Those who persecuted them must pay a brutal price. Thousands in the FBI and DOJ must lose their jobs, be stripped of their pensions, and in some cases face prison terms. Not because we want revenge but because justice must be done, though the heavens fall. Public officials who violated their oaths of office and abused their power must be publicly shamed and severely punished — or else we’re just winking at the villains, inviting them to try harder next time.
They approvingly cited a post-election post on X/Twitter by former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who said the election victory was like seizing the beachhead at Normandy. Flynn tweeted:
But now the real work of rooting out the evil infestation really begins. Removing the infiltrators, the bureaucratic systems and processes that infect decision making and do nothing to protect the safety and security of the American people along with many bureaucrats who wish nothing but ill will to our arriving troops.
Zmirak and Jones offered an assessment of Trump’s first term that is awfully harsh for people who view his recent victory as a miracle:
For four years Trump floated like a hapless rubber duck atop a tsunami, before watching the presidency itself be stolen, his supporters targeted as criminals and “domestic extremists,” and then a raft of crackpot lawfare aimed at bankrupting and imprisoning him.
They blamed Trump staffers who turned out to be his enemies, “rendering him essentially helpless despite his nominal power.”
While it’s hard to imagine that Trump would appreciate Zmirak and Jones portraying him as a hapless president emasculated by his staff, Trump and his advisers have made it clear that they do believe his agenda was stymied by "deep state" bureaucrats—and his effort to stay in power after losing the 2020 election was doomed by White House lawyers and Justice Department officials who refused to go along with his demands that they interfere in the certification of the election results. Project 2025’s efforts to pre-screen thousands of ideological warriors for their loyalty to Trump make it unlikely that he’ll be bringing anyone into the White House or federal agencies who would not unquestioningly carry out whatever order he gives them.
“America can’t afford to see Trump betrayed, crippled and backstabbed as he was in his last term in office,” Zmirak and Jones wrote. They got specific about one former Trump administration official they want to see banished from consideration, calling former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a “defense industry sock puppet” who “played a key role in the Deep State revolt that crippled Trump’s presidency.”
Instead, they wrote, “Trump should listen to those who risked and sacrificed on his and our country’s behalf, like Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.”
In a pre-election post, Zmirak had described media and other “elites who rule us” as “barely in control” of themselves and “just obeying the promptings of the dark spirits to whom they’ve surrendered.” People like Musk and Gabbard, Zmirak wrote, “can smell the brimstone.”
