If Robert Kagan hoped to generate some conversation with a lengthy Washington Post opinion piece last week, he succeeded. Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an editor at large for the Post, presented a provocative warning to the public, arguing that the United States faces the possibility of a “dictatorship” if Donald Trump is returned to the White House.
Sen. J.D. Vance — a former Trump critic turned sycophant — evidently wasn’t persuaded by Kagan’s case. On the contrary, the Ohio Republican this week sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of State Antony Blinken seeking some kind of investigation into the published piece. From the senator’s letter:
“I wish to address to your attention a recent opinion piece published in the pages of a widely-circulated American newspaper. Based on my review of public charging documents that the Department of Justice has filed in courts of law, I suspect that one or both of you might characterize this article as an invitation to ‘insurrection,’ a manifestation of criminal ‘conspiracy,’ or an attempt to bring about civil war.”
In other words, Vance, a Yale-educated lawyer, believes the Post op-ed might have crossed a legal line.
In his correspondence, the GOP lawmaker went on to note that Kagan’s wife, Victoria Nuland, is a senior official in the State Department — and Vance is interested in seeing her security clearance reviewed in light of her husband’s opinion piece for the Post. The Ohioan also wondered in his letter “whether the editors of The Washington Post, having put Kagan’s call to arms in print, might have conspired to suppress the vote.”
In a press statement touting his letter, the senator further characterized Kagan as a “left-wing journalist” — a curious label given Kagan’s record as a prominent neoconservative voice and former aide to Republican officials — before directing people to Fox News’ coverage of his efforts.
As my MSNBC colleague Hayes Brown explained well, Vance’s letter is a partisan stunt, not a serious argument. What’s more, it’s coming from a politician who continues to earn a reputation for unseriousness.
But of particular interest is the irony to which the Republican senator appears indifferent.
Kagan’s fears of a Trump dictatorship — published before Trump told a national television audience of his willingness to create a “Day One” dictatorship — specifically referenced the future of news organizations.
“[I]n a regime where the ruler has declared the news media to be ‘enemies of the state,’ the press will find itself under significant and constant pressure,” Kagan wrote. “Media owners will discover that a hostile and unbridled president can make their lives unpleasant in all sorts of ways.” Trump has made no effort to hide his eagerness to use the levers of federal power to target journalism he disapproves of, and a member of his inner circle this week raised the prospect of possible criminal charges against media professionals Team Trump disapproves of. It was against this backdrop that Vance thought it’d be a good idea to contact the Justice Department, explicitly seeking an investigation into a Washington Post editor for publishing an opinion piece critical of Trump. Or put another way, Kagan warned of a possible Republican dictatorship, which inspired Ohio’s junior senator to contact law enforcement, requesting a possible criminal probe into a journalist who wrote something Republicans didn’t like. It’s almost as if Vance were trying to lend credence to Kagan’s concerns and prove the editor right.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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