Matt Walsh Says Elissa Slotkin's 'Deterrence Message' Would 'Terrorize' GOP

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh told listeners that Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan wants the federal government "to terrorize Republicans" until they stop taking jobs in Republican administrations. He was reacting to remarks the Democrat made at the University of Chicago.

The clip has become a rallying point on the right since it spread online last week. Slotkin called the backlash "manufactured outrage" and says her point was narrow: people who break the law for the president should expect to be held to account.

What Elissa Slotkin Said at the University of Chicago

Slotkin spoke at a University of Chicago event on Oct. 13, Fox News reported. She was describing what Democrats should do if they win back Congress.

The clip Walsh played on The Matt Walsh Show has her saying: "I want to look at these signature cases and not just focus on the president, but on the people who enabled him."

She then set out two ways a new graduate might react to a job offer. The first, as she put it: "Should I go work for the Trump administration? That sounds fun. I might get an opportunity." The reaction she wants instead: "Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don't want, and so let me avoid participating in that."

"I want that deterrence message," she said.

She did not say "terrorize." That word was Walsh's.

Matt Walsh Says Democrats Want to 'Imprison Their Political Opponents'

Walsh brought up the clip near the end of an episode about the riots in France, which he used to argue against voting for Democrats in the midterms.

"This is a sitting Democrat senator saying that in her view, the job of the federal government is to terrorize Republicans to the point that they don't want to work for Republican administrations anymore," Walsh said.

Just before the clip, he said Democrats "also want to imprison their political opponents like all communists do," and pointed to "what they did to Donald Trump and his advisors in the run-up to the last election."

"Their political leaders are calling for violence and they're happy to oblige," Walsh said of Democratic voters. Slotkin did not call for violence in the clip.

Slotkin Responds to the Backlash

Slotkin pushed back on Monday in interviews on CNN and MSNBC. "My point is, do not get yourself involved in illegal activity," she said on CNN, Fox News reported.

In a written statement, she said: "This shouldn't be controversial: if you aid in stealing taxpayer money or directing it to enrich President Trump or his family, then you should be held accountable for that crime," HuffPost reported. HuffPost also reported that one conservative account posted the names and photos of about a dozen people it identified as her staff to more than 500,000 followers on X.

Republicans were not persuaded. Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee called her comments "absolutely disgraceful," and Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, called them "incredibly disappointing and unprofessional," KOMO News reported.

Trump weighed in too. "That's a hell of a statement," he said, according to Fox News. "Slotkin said that there should be prosecutions in order to scare people from going into politics," Trump said.

Slotkin countered that Republicans had backed Trump's weaponization of government, and noted that she herself had been investigated over a 2025 video in which she and other Democratic lawmakers urged service members to refuse illegal orders, KOMO reported.

The Justice Department's investigation of Slotkin over that video went nowhere. In February, a Washington grand jury declined to indict her and five other Democratic lawmakers over the illegal-orders video. Trump had called the video "seditious."

Democrats, Accountability and the Midterms

The broader idea of investigating Trump officials after a change in power has come up in the campaign before. Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer backs impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth if Democrats win Congress, and former Republican Representative Trey Gowdy has warned that a Democratic House would go after the people in Trump's orbit.

The fight now feeds into a midterm where Democrats lead PolitiKool's polling average of the generic congressional ballot by 8.1 points. Whether Slotkin's "signature cases" ever happen depends on that result, and on what a Democratic Congress would actually be able to send to prosecutors.