Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Editors’ Note: As we have been saying for months, this infiltration by “haters” into the Conservative movement is against Conservative principles and, tactically speaking, a huge potential threat to our brand. It also risks fracturing the Conservative movement at a time when we need all the power and unity we can muster. If you are not familiar with Fuentes, Ben Shapiro did a great job in letting this young hot head hang himself with his own words. The man hates Jews, women, Christians who align with Israel, and just about every other group.  Then, on occasion, he says some things one can agree with. Somewhere, the notion of “cancelling” has become confused.  When Rosanne Barr lost her job at the network for making what now seems like a relatively innocent remark, that was “cancellation”.  When one thinks of Tucker Carlson, who has had guests on —from Darryl Cooper to Nick Fuentes —who say patently wrong and ahistorical things, and who leaves them unchallenged, that is bad journalism. And it has become a pattern.  We are not saying Tucker should not have a show, nor are we saying Fuentes is not free to speak his bile.  We are saying both of them should be roundly condemned for it, and Conservatives need to say, “Fuentes is not one of us.” That is not cancellation; that is pushing back and preserving the integrity of the Conservative movement. Ostracizing is not the same as cancelling. We commend the editor of the Daily Caller, as Tucker was a cofounder of the site but has been separated from it for some time. Nevertheless, The Daily Caller had the courage and integrity to call out both Fuentes and Carlson. We are sorry to see equivocation from the Heritage Foundation. We hope they can get themselves sorted out because they are too crucial to the Conservative Movement.  To us at The Prickly Pear, Fuentes is so hateful and ignorant that it seems just natural to call for his removal from the Conservative movement.  It really is not that hard.  If Conservatives don’t police our own ranks, how is that going to look to the people we are trying to convince? Both Tucker and Fuentes are free to peddle their bilge to skinheads and neo-Nazis, but we don’t want the public to think they are Conservatives.

Greetings, Dear Reader,
We’re entering bizarre, yet totally predictable territory.
Heritage is in damage control. Conservatives are pooh-poohing each other. Meanwhile, Mamdani is poised to take over Trump’s hometown and “Arctic Frost” looms heavy.
And before all of this came to pass, I had a fateful conversation among friends in which I called it all inevitable.

CONSERVATIVES IN DISARRAY

Certainty is a rarity in this business, but nevertheless, it does seem almost certain that Heritage’s President Kevin Roberts was getting bad advice.

The whole thing started with Tucker Carlson interviewing Nick Fuentes. Fuentes is relevant for two primary reasons. First, he’s rapidly become one of the most popular podcasters in the country. (More on this later.)

Second, philosophically and politically, his stated belief is that the U.S. government should show preference for white people. He thinks America should be a white, religious ethnostate. He reiterated this belief, albeit in the most moderate tones imaginable, in his time on Tucker’s show.

“We do … on some level … need to be pro-white. Not to the exclusion of other people, but just recognizing that white people have a special heritage here.”

Special racial status is by its nature exclusionary. We know this from history as well as recent history when universities gave bonus points to black applicants simply for being black.

Right along with Fuentes’s belief comes disdain or outright hostility toward other ethnic groups. And this isn’t casual racism, like asking why black people talk in movie theaters. It’s visceral, deep-seated hatred.

I understand what racial division looks like. I lived in two majority Hispanic communities. The Koreans hate the blacks, the blacks hate the Koreans, and everyone hates the Puerto Ricans and their obnoxious parades. Racism, contra prevailing university claptrap, is not for whites only.

Chief among Fuentes’s ethnic targets is, of course, Jews. And that’s where the real trouble starts for everyone.

A few months ago, in friendly company with various Republican operatives and communicators, I raised the issue of Israel.

“Is JD ready for it?” was the primary question I asked, under the assumption JD would be assuming Trump’s mantle in 2028.

The spine of the question is rather simple: Youth on both political ends of the spectrum are growing tired of Washington’s tether to Israel. It also doesn’t appear to be the kind of disregard that abates as years pass. No, in fact, it’s growing; it’s not irrational, and it can’t be ignored.

What’s more, this Israel debate is diverse. It ranges from people on the left who think the country should be outright annihilated all the way to the right, where intellectuals and common youth alike openly wonder how getting tied up in regional conflicts is in the interests of Americans.

Setting aside the most bloodthirsty among us, including the viciously and explicitly antisemitic, a growing chorus is openly asking why we keep getting stuck with the tab for Jerusalem’s foibles.

The national security blob would say going to war with Iran actually deters Beijing, but that explanation is losing its purchase. More and more, such adventures are viewed as they rightfully should be, in my opinion: Protecting and enriching the interests of wealthy and aging global elites at the cost of very young lives.

So the youth is understandably skeptical and getting more hostile by the day.

At best, Washington’s entanglement is a hefty bill in a time that calls for rapid redeployment of resources. Yes, China needs deterring and artificial intelligence needs power and 20 million illegal aliens need lassoing. But also can we start building homes again? Can we underwrite trades instead of universities?

At worst, it’s an obligation to another endless war in which we send the treasure of our youth to go die without a clear understanding of the upside. Something about showing Putin who’s boss?

They’re not buying it.

I believe that these unbelievers in old foreign policy assumptions will hit a critical mass on both sides of the aisle in the next 5-10 years.

I hope JD is ready for it.

—

Nick Fuentes is popular. Why is he popular? It’s obvious and layered at the same time.

First and foremost, he speaks uncomfortable truths loudly. Coming off a decade of vicious suppression for things as pedestrian as “hey, do these masks actually work?” you can see why someone as unapologetic as Fuentes would gain traction.

In a world where the prevailing left was both in control of institutions and utterly insane, someone saying obvious things in the most offensive, obnoxious terms imaginable is bound to gain a following.

And what was so insane about them? Let me count the ways.

They said men can be women. They suppressed studies showing child sex changes were actually bad. They suppressed studies showing the vaccine didn’t work well, or worse, actually hurt people. They shut down churches and schools. They arrested people for going outside. They told us to ignore the dozens, then hundreds, of illegals loitering outside the convenience stores and street corners and hardware stores in small-town America. It’s good actually. Ignore the unchecked immigration. Ignore the crime. The crime isn’t actually happening. How about this: Let’s legalize the crime! They instituted policies that were explicitly hostile to white people. They did this everywhere, from book scholarships at high schools to entrance exams to job applications to movie castings in Hollywood. They even held blacks-only events. They paraded nude men in front of children and called it progress. They even made it quasi-legal to assault people who spoke up about all this. Then they started assassinating us.

Given all that, why Fuentes is popular is obvious.

Second, a lot of what he says when he isn’t raving about “Jewry” or white nationalism is actually correct. Washington’s chief consideration at all times should be: How does this serve Americans? Rapidly altering the demographics of a town, city or state over just a handful of years is a recipe for disaster.

Also, can we please start arresting the criminals again?

Like most extremism in history, it garnishes itself in enormously popular ideas. Entire villages turned themselves over to ISIS in Iraq because Baghdad’s death squads were a decidedly worse option. We’ll cut your hands off if you smoke or drink and your women are slaves now, but you won’t be dead and you’ll have security, running water and food.

If the officials have abandoned you to the excesses and insanities of the extremists on the left, or worse, joined in the fun of destroying everything you love, the Fuenteses of the world start to look like much more attractive leaders.

It’s an absence of effective, constructive and, yes, even zealous leadership that gives rise to folks like Nick Fuentes. It’s the absence or disruption of discourse that makes them more attractive.

We’d do well to remember both.

—

What’s happening to Kevin Roberts right now is what’ll happen to JD eventually if he doesn’t learn from the mistakes and lean into questions as easily foretold as “Why are we going to war for Israel?”

Following the interview with Fuentes, Heritage came under immense pressure to distance itself from Tucker. I imagine what we saw in public was just a smidgen of what they were getting in private, I’m sure in no small part from viciously pro-Israel donors as well.

Heritage made a critical mistake here: It stealth-edited its site to remove mention of Tucker.

At that point, blood is in the water. The calls for a statement hit a critical point, and Roberts made another mistake: He actually made a statement.

Remember, aside from stealth editing their site, at this point, Heritage itself has done nothing wrong. Certainly nothing to merit a statement. They didn’t interview Fuentes, Tucker did.

You can watch the Roberts statement for yourself. The tone is weak. The overall message – besides that he stands with Tucker – is rather unclear. Leaving things like racial hatred open for interpretation is bound to get you pilloried. Good lord, Kevin, the left thinks everyone right of Don Lemon is a Nazi.

What did you expect?

In it, he says he’s against cancellation. A few days later, Heritage fires his top aide, a father of four, for reasons not explicitly stated.

Then he sprinted through every podcast imaginable over the weekend, doing damage control. He finally landed at Hillsdale College, where he explicitly apologized and condemned antisemitism in direct terms.

The funniest part of all this is none of it was necessary. The second funniest part is that nobody in their right mind actually believes Roberts or the Heritage Foundation is a hotbed of antisemitism. Almost none of it is honest.

Heritage should have just done nothing. Would they have lost money from deep-pocketed donors who also happen to demand frequent loyalty statements to foreign capitals? Yes, definitely.

But losing money and remaining distinguished is orders of magnitude better than losing money and debasing yourself.

—

As we consider the factional spat that’s wracked conservatives this week, I think this tweet from Adrian Vermeule is relevant.

The main thing most of my people in DC, the White House and Capitol Hill have been discussing amid all this is: Why aren’t we talking about the “Arctic Frost” disclosures showing how the IC teamed up with Obama and Hillary to overthrow a duly elected administration? Why aren’t we talking about how Mamdani got so popular? Why in the world are we debating whether the Heritage Foundation is antisemitic when the Ivy Leagues allowed swaths of terrorist sympathizers to disrupt the educations of Jews and gentiles alike?

—

Tucker did the right thing talking to Fuentes. Suppressing people only makes them more popular. Familiarity breeds contempt, as they say.

I used to love talking to the Nation of Islam guys when I lived in New York City. It wasn’t long before the conversations became comically feverish.

We can Monday morning quarterback the Tucker interview all we want, but it won’t be the last one Fuentes has. I’d love to see Fuentes go on Piers Morgan next. I’d love to see him so popularized that people reacquaint themselves with the folly of institutionally imposed racial hierarchies the same way I saw the crazy in the eyes of the Islam types, the same way we saw the crazy in racially preferred college admissions. I’m shocked we need to do that again, but it appears we do.

I hate to sound like an absolutist here, but I think the cure to folks like Fuentes is actually more engagement with him, not less.

One bit that went unnoticed by the frothing mania following the interview is how often Tucker attempted to intellectually inoculate Fuentes’s thoughts on Jews, specifically in biblical terms.

—

My last thought on this is that all of it should provide a rough roadmap for JD, should he in fact take the White House in 2028.

The debate around our relationship with Israel is only going to get more pitched.

If we leave it to the savages on both sides, it’ll turn into another Heritage situation or another campus situation, but way worse.

Best to head them off, to stand up and say something compelling and true, to implement diplomacy and policy that’s reflective of American interests and also compassionate to longstanding alliances, and to do all of that without a single trope in sight.

Otherwise, they’re going to come for you, Mr. Vance, and what Roberts went through will pale by comparison.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot Liberty Lockdown

Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on September 30, 2025, at Hillsdale College’s Blake Center for Faith and Freedom in Somers, Connecticut.

While being interviewed on a recent podcast, Texas Democrat Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett decided to opine on crime, a topic on which she apparently considers herself to be an expert. Her nutty conclusion was this: “Just because someone has committed a crime, it doesn’t make them a criminal.”

I can see how this logic would have a wide range of uses for politicians: “Just because someone told a lie, it doesn’t make them a liar”; “Just because someone took a bribe, it doesn’t make them corrupt.” It’s a bit like the thought experiment: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” If a crime is committed and no one is responsible, was there actually a crime at all?

Of course, it’s nonsense. A criminal is defined precisely as a person who has committed a crime. But when Crockett chooses her own definitions, she is simply echoing a progressive shibboleth that has turned blue cities across the country into lawless hellholes. It holds that people who commit crimes have no agency—that they are helpless victims of circumstance. Therefore, any attempt to hold them accountable by arresting them or putting them in jail is unjust—it further victimizes them.

The obvious result of this logic is that criminals are emboldened and their real victims become helpless hostages to lawlessness.

It is a short step from Crockett’s logic to the justification of defunding the police as a way to “make communities safer.” That communities become safer by having fewer police is, of course, a lie, but defunding police is what progressives have been doing since the anti-cop, BLM-Antifa riots of the “Summer of Love” in 2020.

As a former police reporter, I’ve seen how soft-on-crime policies hurt the very people progressives pretend to care about. It’s precisely the most vulnerable in our big cities who need the most policing and have the least resources to protect themselves from mayhem.

Living in New York City off and on over the past three decades, including in the pre-Mayor Rudy Giuliani era when it was a dystopian hellscape of crime and no-go zones, it’s striking how quickly soft-on-crime policies at the state and local level destroy your day-to-day sense of safety. Progressive criminal justice “reforms,” such as defunding the police, ending cash bail, refusing to prosecute misdemeanors, letting thousands of convicted felons out of prison early, and slashing the prison population, are the most obvious contributors to the escalating violent crime problem in blue cities.

In 2014, Bill de Blasio was elected Mayor of what he boasted was “the safest big city in America.” He championed all sorts of progressive policies, from bail reform to decriminalizing offenses such as public urination and marijuana possession—and eventually the New York City Council defunded the NYPD to the tune of $1 billion.

As predicted by everybody with any understanding of human nature, it did not take long for the city to become scary. There was a surge of mentally ill homeless people accorded the so-called freedom to sleep on the streets, and open-air drug bazaars popped up all over the place. This was followed by a surge of violent crime, including a spate of people being pushed in front of subway trains. Shoplifting became so normalized that convenience and drug stores had to lock up toothpaste.

The decriminalization of pot and public urination has only turbocharged the sense of chaos and disorder in blue cities. It marks a rejection of the famous “broken windows” theory that was the key to turning New York City around under Giuliani. The theory holds that addressing minor crimes, such as vandalism and public intoxication, creates an atmosphere of order and lawfulness. By contrast, the policy of ignoring so-called minor crimes encourages disorder and lawlessness.

People don’t knowingly or willingly vote for their quality of life to deteriorate. But this is the progressive template, whether in the cities they control or on a national level with the open borders policy that, under the Biden administration, brought in 20-25 million illegal migrants, many of them criminals.

It is common sense that law and order is an 80-20 issue. You don’t need a pollster to say so, although according to a recent AP-NORC poll, 81 percent of Americans across political persuasions say crime is a “major problem.” The other 19 percent must be either criminals, progressive politicians, or both.

In a world not defined by Jasmine Crockett, it makes no sense that progressives would remain stubbornly on the wrong side of their own voters. But their unhinged hostility to President Trump’s successful crime crackdown in Washington, D.C., suggests that that’s where they are.

In the first three weeks after Trump sent the National Guard into the nation’s capital, Attorney General Pam Bondi reported 1,528 arrests and 156 illegal guns seized. Nearly half of the arrests were of illegal migrant criminals, including violent felons convicted of rape, child molestation, assault, and robbery with a deadly weapon.

The D.C. crime rate plummeted across the board as a result, with violent crime down 30 percent in the first month after federal troops were deployed on August 7, according to the White House. The Metropolitan Police Department was even more bullish, citing a 40 percent drop in violent crime when compared to the same period last year, including a staggering 82 percent drop in carjackings.

D.C. residents, most of whom are black, expressed relief at being able to live without fear of being robbed or assaulted. Yet left-wing pundits on CNN and MSNBC called Trump a “dictator” and said his crackdown on “so-called crime” is racist and a “military occupation.” Bondi had to fire two of her staff members—left-wing paralegals who hurled foul-mouthed abuse and a Subway sandwich at federal officers who are bringing order to D.C.

Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser, who had been remarkably cooperative with the federal intervention, nonetheless testified on September 18 that Trump’s National Guard deployment had nothing to do with the newly safe streets. She would rather be seen as unmoored from the truth than publicly admit that more cops and more arrests reduce crime. The hostility to law and order runs deep in a party that has made defunding the police an article of faith.

Trump is plowing ahead regardless, vowing to expand his D.C. policies to high crime cities like Chicago, Memphis, and Baltimore, which he called a “hellhole.” He is onto a popular issue and has shown that crime crackdowns can rapidly improve American lives. Ultimately he hopes to shame big-city mayors into cleaning up their own cities before he sends in the troops.

When asked by a reporter if he would consider sending the National Guard into Republican-run cities that are “also seeing high crime,” Trump replied: “Sure, but there aren’t that many of them. If you look at the top 25 cities for crime, just about every one of those cities is run by Democrats.” Cue apoplexy from the usual suspects, but he was right. If anything, he understated the problem. A 2022 report by the Heritage Foundation, “The Blue City Murder Problem,” found that 27 of the top 30 cities with the highest homicide rates were run by Democrats.

Now, inexplicably, New York City is set to elect a far-left mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who wants to decriminalize misdemeanors and divert money from cops to social workers. The Democratic Socialists of America platform he ran on when he was elected to the New York Assembly in 2021 called for decriminalizing all drugs, letting illegal immigrants vote and hold elected office, and dealing with 26-year-old criminals as youth offenders. Now he plans to make New York a double sanctuary city for illegal aliens and transgenderism, mirroring the catastrophic soft-on-crime policies of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.

Mamdani wants to ban ICE from removing violent criminals and predators, and he wants to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to create more “LGBTQIA+ Liaisons” in schools to brainwash more kids into thinking they are trapped in a body of the opposite sex. He also wants to codify transgender guidelines to force girls to share bathrooms with biological males.

Lawlessness and disorder are not inevitable in big cities. Giuliani demonstrated this 30 years ago in New York, and Trump has now proved it again in D.C. But the dwindling percentage of voters in New York who bother turning in a ballot for the mayoral race are determined to be the turkeys who voted for Thanksgiving.

The law-and-order paradox is even more stark when it comes to illegal migrant criminals. When Trump claimed on the campaign trail that other countries had opened their jails and set the inmates loose on America, it seemed like hyperbole. But among the bad hombres that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Czar Tom Homan have been arresting, there is an enormous preponderance of murderers, rapists, and child molesters.

You would think that we have enough home-grown criminals without importing new ones. But that is what Joe Biden and whoever was wielding his autopen decided willfully to do for four years while the nation’s media turned a blind eye.

After years of gaslighting and excuses from the Biden administration, Trump fulfilled his promise to secure the border within the first 100 days of his second term. But now comes the hard part: deportations. You would think every American would welcome the removal of the sorts of criminal degenerates who raped and murdered Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, and twelve-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray. But no! ICE and Border Patrol officers are under attack from violent, organized militants posing as protesters who throw rocks at their vehicles, slash their tires, and obstruct their movements. Officers have also been doxxed and labeled fascists.

Recently, an ICE officer was seriously injured when he was dragged down the road by a car driven by a criminal illegal alien resisting arrest. In January, a Border Patrol agent was ambushed and slaughtered by members of a vegan transgender cult on a murderous rampage across the country. On September 24, there was a sniper attack on an ICE facility in Dallas. That followed a July 4 shooting attack on an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas.

The job is made more dangerous by sanctuary city laws, whereby authorities refuse to hand over violent criminal illegal aliens for deportation. DHS and ICE are conducting operations right now in Chicago, but Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson are doing everything they can to obstruct these operations.

I went on a pre-dawn raid in Chicago recently with Secretary Noem and more than 100 heavily armed Border Patrol and ICE agents. We rode in armored vehicles with helicopter and drone support to execute a felony arrest warrant on a single criminal illegal alien who had previously been deported but returned under Biden and has convictions for violent assault. It was an extraordinary commitment of resources for one criminal—although, as often happens with these raids, it netted an additional four illegal migrants who were also in the house.

Given the challenges of each deportation, it seems unlikely that Biden’s toxic border legacy can be reversed in four years, so we may be stuck with extra mayhem from foreign criminals beyond the next election cycle.

Trump’s latest law-and-order crackdown comes in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. On September 22, the President designated the violent anarchist group Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. The 22-year-old leftist who shot Kirk in the throat as he was answering a question about transgender violence at a crowded campus event in Utah had carved Antifa slogans and transgender references onto his shell casings. Despite Jimmy Kimmel’s claim, the killer was not a “MAGA Republican.” He was a radicalized leftist with a trans lover who was also a “furry”—someone with a sexual fetish involving dressing up as an animal. The assassin told family members that Kirk was hateful and that “some hate can’t be negotiated out.”

Kirk’s murder has brought to the fore the leftist political violence that has engulfed this country in recent years. Only two months ago, Kirk warned that “assassination culture is spreading on the left,” citing a poll showing that

forty-eight percent of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk. Fifty-five percent said the same about Donald Trump. The left is being whipped into a violent frenzy. Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response.

The latest wave of violence began with the deadly BLM-Antifa riots of 2020, which were tacitly encouraged by Democrats like Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as a way to destabilize then-President Trump. Then, of course, Trump was the target of two assassination attempts last year. There was the arson and vandalism against Tesla dealerships to intimidate Elon Musk and punish him for supporting Trump. In May, Israeli Embassy staffers Yaron Lischinsky and his fiancée Sarah Lynn Milgrim were assassinated, allegedly by a left-wing Palestinian activist, outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. Even the arson attack on the home of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro was perpetrated by a left-wing, pro-Hamas, anti-Israel activist.

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated in Manhattan last December, shot in the back in cold blood, allegedly by wealthy leftist Luigi Mangione, who spouted left-wing critiques of corporate greed and has become a folk hero to the Left. When Mangione appeared in a Manhattan courtroom recently, a crowd of supporters chanted, “Free Luigi,” and cheered when the judge dropped some of the charges against him.

The public outpouring of sympathy for Mangione and the callous attitude towards his victim, a midwestern father of two teenagers who worked his way to the top, seem to have altered the political discourse on violence. “Violence is never the answer,” was Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren’s verdict on Mangione. “But people can only be pushed so far.” Warren’s colleagues doubled down on their dehumanization of Trump and his supporters, branding them as fascists and Nazis. All that was needed for tragedy to ensue was an unhinged person to take them at their word.

With their dehumanizing rhetoric and soft-on-crime policies, progressives create permission structures that excuse crime and violence, remove accountability, and blur the distinction between right and wrong. As if that weren’t enough, in New York they have also created powerful disincentives for good citizens to protect themselves or others from crime.

A case in point was the persecution of former U.S. Marine Daniel Penny, who subdued a homeless, mentally ill man, Jordan Neely, as he was threatening to kill passengers on a New York subway car. Neely died soon after police arrived, and Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg charged Penny with homicide. Penny was acquitted by a jury, but not before being portrayed by the media and others on the Left as a racist vigilante, despite the fact that passengers testified how scared they had been and how grateful they were that he had intervened.

It was a tragedy that there was no Good Samaritan like Penny in the light rail car in Charlotte, North Carolina, where 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska was murdered with a knife by another homeless man with a lengthy criminal record. But that was the point of prosecuting Penny: to make an example of him and dissuade other valiant young men from protecting women like Iryna.

The intense blowback against Trump’s efforts to restore law and order rams home the point that it is a deliberate choice by progressives to preserve lawlessness in their cities. When you think about it, the strategy seems to have paid off, if all you care about is power, since progressives have a generational stranglehold on the cities with the worst crime.

From that skewed perspective, maybe Crockett isn’t so nutty after all. 

*****

This article was published by Imprimis, a production of Hillsdale College and is reproduced with permission.

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Operation Arctic Frost is a recently revealed FBI investigation (uncovered in documents released by the House Judiciary Committee in October 2025) into alleged 2020 election-related activities. The probe, led by Special Counsel Jack Smith, targeted over 160 Republican figures—including lawmakers, state officials, and GOP groups—for potential crimes tied to efforts to challenge or overturn the election results. Key details include:

• The FBI sought 197 subpoenas, monitored communications of at least eight Republican senators, and collected data on broader Republican networks.
• It was authorized by Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray, and some documents allege it involved surveillance tactics that critics call “spying.”
• The investigation fed into Smith’s broader probe into 2020 election interference, though no significant charges against the targeted Republicans have resulted from it so far.

This operation has been dubbed “Biden’s Watergate” by critics, who argue it represents politicized abuse of federal power.

Moreover, it has implications for election integrity.  It is often said that Trump and his allies made unsupported accusations regarding the fairness of the 2020 election.  However, if attempting to get supporting material is considered a crime, how could one ever legitimately challenge an election?

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) stated: “Based on the evidence to date, Arctic Frost and related weaponization by federal law enforcement under Biden was arguably worse than Watergate.” Similar rhetoric has come from Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Eric Schmitt (R-MO), who call for “Watergate-style hearings.”

Why is Arctic Frost worse than Watergate?  Basically, because rather than an isolated burglary of one Democrat office, it is a wholesale attack on the Republican Party and the conservative ecosphere generally. 

For the politically sensitive, this is far more sinister than mean tweets or even the Capitol Riot, commonly called January 6th.

Rather than an attempt to get dirt on the opposition party, Arctic Frost entails officials and law enforcement agencies being turned directly against domestic political opponents, their funding base, and their think tanks.

Over 400 Republican entities and individuals subpoenaed, including Trump’s campaign, the RNC, Save America PAC, America First Policy Institute, Conservative Partnership Institute, MyPillow (Mike Lindell’s company), and even Alex Jones/Infowars. This builds on earlier reports of 160+ Republicans, like 8-9 GOP senators (e.g., Ted Cruz, Mike Lee), whose communications were monitored.

Unlike Watergate, which was a rogue operation, this was a coordinated attack on conservative organizations and politicians involving over 197 subpoenas for bank records, donor lists, emails, and more; some warrantless surveillance. Rather than Cuban burglars, this monstrous operation was signed off on by AG Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray.

In Watergate, Nixon’s campaign broke into Democratic headquarters, subsequently attempted to cover it up with obstruction, perjury, and abuse of power (e.g., using the CIA and IRS against enemies). In the end, it led to 48 convictions, including top aides. Everybody, including Republicans, widely condemned it.

A small delegation of Republican congressional leaders visited President Nixon at the White House to deliver a stark reality check amid the Watergate scandal. Led by Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), the group included Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott (R-PA) and House Minority Leader John Rhodes (R-AZ). They informed Nixon that, based on their private soundings, he could expect only about 10-15 votes in the Senate to acquit him if impeached and convicted—far short of the two-thirds majority needed to survive. Goldwater, a Nixon ally and the GOP’s 1964 presidential nominee, later described the meeting as one where he bluntly told the president, “There is no way you can avoid impeachment.” This bipartisan pressure (though the delegation was all-Republican, reflecting the GOP’s collapse in support) led to Nixon’s resignation, the first in presidential history.

So far, no Democrat has condemned President Biden’s illegal actions.  Nor are there any trials pending, or convictions obtained.

So, in a sense, Watergate was worse in that it led to the resignation of a President and 48 criminal convictions.

But the political crimes are arguably worse in that Arctic Frost was intended to kneecap the Conservative movement, which included a lot of private people, not political leaders.  Furthermore, we don’t know yet whether Congress and the Department of Justice will go after the Democrats who launched Arctic Frost.  So comparing Watergate to Arctic Frost is a little like comparing a nine-inning baseball game to one still in the bottom of the first inning.

We don’t know whether the upcoming investigations and prosecutions will rival Watergate in that regard.  But in terms of how broad the attack was, and that the operation was not a rogue operation at all, but carried out by the highest officials, it looks far worse as a political crime.

The “top-down” dynamic as a key differentiator—Watergate’s dirty tricks often get boiled down to the “Plumbers” (a rogue-ish White House squad of less than 20 operatives), but Nixon himself orchestrated much of it from the Oval Office, using his authority to loop in CIA, FBI, and IRS brass. That said, Arctic Frost’s chain of command feels more bureaucratically entrenched, greenlit by the entire executive law enforcement apparatus under Biden, which amplifies the institutional threat. It’s less a heist crew gone wild and more like the entirety of state machinery was deliberately set loose on one’s political opponents.

This is chilling for the political process.  Who would want to get involved in politics, or even get involved in policy arguments, if you feel that, routinely, the entire law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the government will be turned against you?  In short, Biden treated domestic political opposition as if he were facing the power of a hostile foreign state.

This takes political party fighting to a dangerous level, one deadly to the functioning of a representative republic.  Cynically, this was all done under the Orwellian goal to “save democracy.”

In terms of precedent, Arctic Frost is thus much more dangerous.  It is one thing for political parties to compete for voters’ attention.  It is quite another thing for one party to seize the police machinery of government, a government that also belongs to Republicans and Independents, to destroy the other political party and supporting private infrastructure.