Elizabeth Warren and Joe Lieberman. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Scott Eisen/Getty Images and Win McNamee/Getty Images.

On Monday, Elizabeth Warren more or less announced that she’s running for president. On Wednesday, she made clear what kind of campaign she’s going to run: One that takes no prisoners, pulls no punches, and comes out of nowhere to absolutely wallop Joe Lieberman—the former Democratic senator/VP candidate turned quasi-Republican and phoney-baloney lobbyist hack—for his sleazy deal to help Chinese telecom giant ZTE try to get out of trouble for violating U.S. sanctions and possibly facilitating espionage against American targets.


Check it:


She even tagged him, as if to say: Hey, Joe, how you doing? Kids good? Great! That’s great. By the way, why don’t you walk on over here and check out how bad you just got burnt?

(You can read Warren’s anti-corruption bill here. It’s very thorough, proposing the creation of something called the U.S. Office of Public Integrity that would enforce a set of expanded conflict-of-interest and disclosure rules meant to expose and cripple the corrupt revolving-door lobbying process. )

Poor guy thought he was just going to pick up some nice fat checks for making a few phone calls on behalf of a shady foreign mega-corporation and instead he walks directly into the firing line. Damn. 2020 is “lit,” kids.