The president of the United States is now using the Department of Justice to investigate former officials whose only real offense was telling the truth.

On April 9, 2025, President Donald Trump signed executive orders directing the DOJ to investigate two former administration officials, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, for allegedly mishandling classified information.

Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, was fired in 2020 for publicly affirming that the election was secure. Taylor, a former DHS official, wrote an anonymous 2018 op-ed and a later book exposing dysfunction inside Trump’s White House.

This isn’t about national security. It’s about criminalizing opposition, inside or outside the government. It’s about erasing dissent as a legitimate act.

And like every good authoritarian, Trump’s cleaning house. Starting with the people who refused to lie for him.

Why Is He Getting Away With It?

Because in an America built on grievance, retribution, and the thrill of shutting someone else up, authoritarianism doesn’t feel dangerous.

It feels good.

When Trump targets people like Krebs and Taylor, the Silent Majority cheers. For years, they felt unheard. Censored. Mocked.

And to be fair, some of that wasn’t imagined. Whole communities were left behind, sneered at, written off as backwards, bigoted, expendable.

That wound was real. But Trump didn’t heal it. He exploited it. He gave it a language. Grievance, vengeance, domination. He repurposed the pain and handed it back as permission to punish.

And now they don’t care how it gets done.

They’re not worried about silencing dissent because they’ve been told that their fellow Americans are the danger.

Authoritarians don’t just rise to power. They invent enemies to justify it. And when the perceived enemies seem like a threat, prosecuting them doesn’t feel wrong. It feels necessary.

But repression is never selective. Once the machine starts silencing, it doesn’t stop at your enemies. Eventually, it comes for you too.

And when it swings back around, and it will, there won’t be a check, a balance, or a single mechanism left to stop it.

We Have Seen This Before

The last time a country cheered this loudly for a purge, it didn’t end in “getting their country back”, it ended in the annihilation of it. And the murder of more than 11 million people.

This story bears repeating. Again

and again

and again.

Because it’s happening, again.

In 1930’s Germany, it started with the civil service, Jews, leftists, anyone labeled disloyal was purged. These were the people the public had been told were the problem. Enemies of the state. Parasites on the system.

Their removal didn’t feel like repression to those who backed Hitler. It felt like justice. Like restoration. Like payback.

The German public didn’t recoil. They clapped.

No one asked who was next. They were too busy enjoying the show. And that’s the warning Republicans are missing now.

They may loathe the Hitler comparison. Which is interesting, considering the parallels write themselves. But what they really hate is how close it cuts. In 1930’s Germany, the targeted prosecutions were celebrated. Just like they are now.

And they called it patriotism all the way to the end.

This Won’t End the Way They Think

Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor are being persecuted for the crime of telling the truth.And the base is cheering.

Watching your perceived enemies fall feels good. It always does at first.

But here’s what they can’t see. You can’t limit authoritarianism to just your enemies.The machine doesn’t stop at the edge of your grievance.

Once it’s running, it eats everything, including the people who helped turn it on.

And it won’t end because people wake up. It will end when the cost of silence outweighs the thrill of retribution.

When the tariffs they cheered for come back around crushing the family farm they’ve held for three generations.

Choking their small business built on now unaffordable imported parts. When they realize the global markets they were told to fear were the same ones keeping them alive.

It ends when the government they trusted starts pulling the rug out from under them. Farm subsidies vanish. Disaster relief gets political. Small business loans dry up.

It ends when the rural hospital shuts down. When there’s no reporter to cover it. When no one in office answers the phone. That’s when the cracks form.

Not from moral clarity. But from consequence.

And that’s the heartbreak under all of it. Not just that Trump voters are being misled, but that they’re being used.

That the same people who were ignored for years are now being fed into a machine they helped build, believing it would only hurt someone else.

But it never does. Not for long.

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