
Adopting authoritarian language, Republicans demand the DOJ be swept clean of any officials who don't bow to Trump.

Rep. Matt Gaetz's (R-FL) shtick is already getting old.

Having volunteered to be Donald Trump's designated attack dog against special counsel Robert Mueller, the previously little-known congressman is being rewarded with face time on Air Force One.

But his empty threats against Mueller and the FBI are sounding increasingly hollow, since Gaetz never produces any fresh evidence against either. Instead, he just robotically regurgitates the same talking points over and over about how the FBI is staffed with a bunch of "pro-Hillary" feminist hippies.


Or something.

It's all part of a larger White House strategy to try to distract from Mueller’s investigation, which has already secured two guilty pleas and is reportedly scheduled to continue through all of next year.

And worse, from the GOP perspective, is the fact that Gaetz regularly undercuts his own claims about there being some kind of rogue, unsupervised, anti-Trump operation running wild inside the Republican-run Department of Justice.

That's what Gaetz did while appearing on Fox News Wednesday night, where it now appears all guests are contractually obligated to portray Republican Mueller as a treasonous villain.

Gaetz cheered the "purge" currently underway at the FBI. That's the extraordinary, authoritarian term more and more Republicans are using to describe the kind of ideological cleansing they want to take place.

https://shareblue.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/FNC_12-27-2017_23.10.27.mp4 GAETZ: Well, the purge is happening. We just saw Andrew McCabe announce his retirement recently. You saw Bruce Ohr, who was at the Department of Justice demoted and you saw Peter Strzok, the person who sent this horrible anti-Trump text messages, the same Peter Strzok who was very involved in the exoneration statement for Hillary Clinton and then got drafted into the Mueller probe. He's also been demoted and reassigned. And so time and again, you see the senior leadership at these agencies exposed for their bias. And that shouldn't in any way impair the good work that folks on the ground are doing each and every day to protect the country.

Note that Gaetz excitedly points out that agents who may have acted improperly have "been demoted or reassigned."

So what's the point of the GOP witch hunt? Republicans are endlessly attacking Mueller for having moved swiftly and forcefully to remove any possibly tainted players from his team?

It makes no sense, of course. But the GOP remains in full panic mode as the Mueller team expands its probe and puts the Republican Party, and Trump family members, on notice.