OAN Commentary by: Corey R. Lewandowski
Friday, September 12, 2025
Democrats have spent most of the last decade trying to “get Trump.” In their fevered imaginations, the scandal that will finally bring him down is always just around the corner. But their latest effort shows they’ve started phoning it in.
Last week, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) tried to spin a routine merger approved by Attorney General Pam Bondi into Watergate 2.0 — even though the U.S. intelligence community itself pushed the deal through, calling it “critical to countering China.” That’s how desperate the writers’ room has become. It’s like watching a once-great film franchise devolve into a string of bargain-bin sequels.
Their theory? That the Trump administration approved HPE-Juniper telecommunications merger “for reasons other than law and public interest.” Never mind that the reason was obvious — the intelligence community personally asked the DOJ to approve the merger protect America from China’s Huawei, a company banned from the U.S. for being connected to the Chinese Community Party. Huawei is steamrolling the global telecom market while the U.S. has no competitive homegrown providers of its own. This merger was viewed by U.S. defense professionals as America’s public policy response to the Huawei threat.
The supposed scandal here boils down to this: some lobbyists supported the merger too.Big deal.
Blue-state attorneys general have dutifully piled on, and a recently fired DOJ official, Roger Alford, is auditioning for the role of “next James Comey” by alleging a political cover-up.
If this sounds like a weak sequel, that’s because it is.
I may not agree with director Paul Voerhoeven’s politics, but Starship Troopers is a classic. The four direct-to-video sequels it spawned? Not so much.
In the same way, Democrats started strong with Russiagate. Even those of us who knew it was partisan nonsense can appreciate the production value. This scandal had it all: high stakes (a Russian agent as president!), a strong cast (led by Robert Mueller), and even some inventive writing (the Steele Dossier).
The first few sequels — including the Zelenskyy phone call — also showed a certain commitment to the craft. But as Sylvester Stallone discovered, once you’ve wrapped up your protagonist’s Russia arc, there’s nowhere else for the story to go. Anybody remember Rocky V?
Later entries in the “Trump scandals” franchise have felt increasingly contrived and underwhelming. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had to invent a whole new crime just to convict the then-former president of … accounting irregularities. That was the best they could do. After all the effort Democrats expended making Trump an iconic villain, it was like watching Voldemort get a parking ticket.
Other interregnum-era scandals, like the Georgia election interference case, benefitted from a seemingly stronger premise than some of the other past allegations (not that that’s saying much) but then failed to deliver. There simply wasn’t a “there” there. It’s true that Fani Willis’ racketeering prosecution led to one of the most recognizable images of the series: Trump’s mugshot. But one epic moment can’t turn a failing franchise around. Dirty Harry’s “Make my day” line is iconic. That doesn’t mean Sudden Impact is worth watching.
Since Trump returned to office, the focus has shifted to spinoffs. Like Jurassic Park 2 or Hobbs & Shaw, these lower-stakes outings focus on supporting characters rather than the original protagonist.
The liberal opinionmakers who serve as executive producers must have realized that their audience will eat whatever they’re served. Any contrived scandal can be a hit without being ambitious, compelling, or even particularly coherent. When the audience rewards you for churning out slop, why give them anything better?
Just as Star Wars superfans will gobble up irrelevant anecdotes about some character who got two seconds of screentime in the Mos Eisley cantina, die-hard Trump haters will happily tune in for a multi-week nothingburger built around Pete Hegseth’s Signal chat.
The latest entry, however, (the big stink over the telecom merger that the U.S. intelligence community personally asked for), might be the most disappointing one yet.
I love National Treasure as much as the next guy, but the people who watch those movies are in on the joke. They know that movie’s conspiracy theorizing isn’t deadly earnest the way it is in Oliver Stone’s JFK. They know there’s no treasure map on the back of the Declaration. They just want to be entertained.
Unfortunately for our country, the Democrats who eagerly consume each new phony Trump scandal aren’t quite so discerning.
(Views expressed by guest commentators may not reflect the views of OAN or its affiliates.)
Corey R. Lewandowski was a senior adviser to the Donald J. Trump presidential campaign in 2024 and 2020 and campaign manager during the 2016 campaign.
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