Mike Davis wants to cage kids, put Trump enemies in a ‘gulag.’ He could be our next AG.

American democracy was at a near-breaking point on Jan. 3, 2021, as then-president Donald Trump stepped up his efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory. Trump’s new plan was to install a fanatical ally named Jeffrey Clark — a virtually unknown Justice Department lawyer — as acting attorney general. Clark had drafted a letter with a blatantly false claim that Justice had found substantial voter fraud in Georgia — with similar letters planned for other key states — in a last-ditch effort to urge state legislatures to replace Biden electors before the Jan. 6 certification.

Trump’s dangerous scheme was thwarted — but only after all of the top career prosecutors in Justice, including the current acting AG Jeffrey Rosen, told the president they would resign en masse and go public with what was happening. “Within 24-48-72 hours, you could have hundreds and hundreds of resignations of the leadership of your entire Justice Department because of your actions,” Richard Donoghue, the acting assistant AG who was at that day’s contentious Oval Office meeting, recalled telling the 45th president. “What’s that going to say about you?”

Trump backed down, and — after a violent Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill failed to stop certification of Biden’s victory — slinked away from the White House in defeat.

Flash forward three years, and Trump is the overwhelming front-runner to again become the GOP presidential nominee in 2024, with early polls giving him a chance of defeating Biden in a rematch. And if he does indeed become America’s 47th president on Jan. 20, 2025, Trump seems to have two main goals: revenge against his political enemies, and creating a government teeming with fervent loyalists who won’t block his path the way those career government lawyers did in 2021.

That’s where Mike Davis comes in. Most folks, except for the most politically obsessed, have never heard of Davis, but it’s time for people to learn. The mid-40s-ish Davis takes the abstract warnings that U.S. democracy is on the line in the 2024 election and brings them to life.

Actually, there are two Mike Davises.

The first you might call “resumé Mike Davis,” with the Des Moines, Iowa, native hitting all the right marks for rapid advancement in today’s conservative legal movement. A member of the Federalist Society, Davis worked as a consultant to boost the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, then became chief counsel for nominations to the GOP chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, fellow Iowan Chuck Grassley. He served Grassley during the contentious hearings over eventual Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the push by Trump and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to pack the judiciary with right-wing judges. He now heads two ultraconservative efforts, the Article III Project and the internet Accountability Project.

On paper, it wouldn’t be a stretch for a Republican president to give someone like Davis a top post. But the attorney’s resume doesn’t tell you about the other Mike Davis — now a verbal pit bull for Trump and his MAGA movement, making increasingly outrageous statements seemingly aimed at getting the attention of the boss and his inner circle.

In late September, Davis appeared on a right-wing podcast, the Benny Johnson Show, and described what he might do given three weeks as an interim attorney general by a victorious Trump in 2025. He joked — perhaps — that the new president would have to grant him a pardon as he left town after what Davis described as “a reign of terror” during which he would “unleash hell on Washington, D.C.”

What came next was an agenda very much in line with Trump’s overheated rally rhetoric, the not-secret Project 2025 blueprint, and recent news leaks. Davis claimed he would demolish the “deep state” of career politicians, indict the current president “and every other scumball, sleazeball Biden,” and help to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.

“We’re gonna deport a lot of people, 10 million people and growing — anchor babies, their parents, their grandparents,” Davis added. “We’re gonna put kids in cages. It’s gonna be glorious. We’re gonna detain a lot of people in the D.C. gulag and Gitmo.”

Look, we can all agree there’s something about the podcast format and its jokey banter that encourages guests to make outrageous, over-the-top statements (just ask Charissa Thompson, right?). The reality, though, of what Davis told Benny Johnson is that perhaps it should not be taken literally, but seriously. This ambitious right-wing lawyer may or may not be a true believer but he knows how to audition for Trump, and it’s working.

» READ MORE: Why is Trump talking just like Hitler? | Will Bunch Newsletter

“There are a couple people you could put in positions like that, we talk about Mike Davis as attorney general,” Donald Trump Jr. said during his own podcast. “You almost have to, just put them in as interim even, just to send that shot across the bow to the swamp … let Mike Davis and Kash Patel to be like interim AG’s. Put Laura Loomer as press secretary for just a couple of days.”

That’s because Team Trump has coalesced around a worldview that its leader was denied implementing his radical vision — including enforcing the Big Lie of 2020 election fraud — in his first term because too many political functionaries from what it calls “the administrative state” stood in his way. That’s not wrong. In addition to the Jan. 3 revolt among the Justice Department, you had principled leaders like now-retired Gen. Mark Milley, then the Joint Chiefs chair, who stood in the way of improperly calling in troops on Jan. 6 to perhaps block the election certification.

Now, the driving force for a revenge-minded second Trump term has nothing to do with fighting inflation or fixing relations with China. The POTUS 45 inner circle is determined to oust those pesky bureaucrats and career pols from Justice, the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom and whoever else stands in the way of the dream for a “Red Caesar” to smash both “the deep state” and American liberalism. It would surely take more than one Mike Davis, after all, to deport 10 million people and enthusiastically put “kids in cages” at the southern border again.

Last week, Axios reported that a massive and unprecedented operation is already underway — costing tens of millions of dollars and using AI developed by Oracle — to prescreen candidates to replace a whopping 54,000 entrenched officials throughout the government. It’s an army of Trump loyalists who — in the polite mainstream media phrasing of Axios — are “willing to stretch traditional boundaries.”

In recent days, Trump has increasingly alarmed folks with rhetoric that directly echoes 20th-century fascist dictators like Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler — describing any left-wing foes as “vermin” and claiming that refugees are “poisoning the blood” of America. But the overheated words of a dictator still need an army of storm troopers to make it happen, as well as a devoted inner circle of propagandists, torturers, and eager “yes men.”

Mike Davis is a sad example of how this downward spiral works. It shows how a guy with a solid resume for an increasingly conservative Republican Party devolves morally to the level where locking up desperate children from Central America in cages becomes “glorious.” He will say anything to curry favor and advance in the eyes of the Dear Leader.

To be sure, there are still big questions about whether and how this all happens. Even with the Democrats in real danger of losing their slim control of the Senate in the 2024 elections, and with the retirement of the last sensible Republicans like Sen. Mitt Romney, would a man who promised to put political enemies in a “gulag” be able to win a confirmation vote? If not, how far would a Trump 47 be willing to bend the rules or break the Constitution to get his way?

That’s why the time to talk about Mike Davis as attorney general — and the all-too real stakes of another Trump presidency — is not on Jan. 21, 2025, but right now. If Trump gets the keys to the Oval Office for a second time, it’s clear he will use any means necessary to get his way — to punish his enemies, pardon his friends, and inflict real pain on migrants and others. And there’s only one way to stop him — on Election Day.

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