A Guest Contribution by Michael D. Bishop, former Republican United States Congressman (MI), 2015-2019
THE LIE THAT BROKE THE REPUBLIC
There are moments in history when a nation faces a reckoning, not just with its adversaries, but with itself. For America, that moment began the day Donald J. Trump was elected President. What followed was not peaceful opposition.
It wasn’t political disagreement or ideological dissent. It was a coordinated and ruthless campaign to delegitimize a duly elected President and, in the process, fracture the trust of the people and the very foundation of our Republic.
The Russian collusion narrative was never about truth. It was never about national security. It was an intentional lie, hatched by the highest level of political operatives, weaponized by a compromised deep state, and handed off to a salivating media that had long since abdicated its role as a check on power and instead became a megaphone for it.
This wasn’t sloppy journalism or bad intel, it was professional theater. A performance meant to create the illusion of scandal and feed the perception that the President of the United States was a foreign agent.
Rachel Maddow called him a “Russian op.”
Rachel #Maddow Unveils New Russia Details: ’50-50′ Chance Trump Is On Tape With Russian Prostitutes pic.twitter.com/FlROFh9ZNS
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) March 13, 2018
Adam Schiff repeatedly claimed he had “evidence” that never existed. On the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, I watched personally as Sheila Jackson Lee, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, and others echoed the lie with a venom that left no room for doubt about their intentions.
Hillary Clinton, who refused to accept her loss with any semblance of grace, declared the President illegitimate and launched what became the first truly organized election denial movement in modern history. From there, the hate and hysteria metastasized.
NPR relied on ‘ever-present muse’ Adam Schiff during Russiagate to ‘damage’ Trump, editor says https://t.co/xiK44pok4c
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 10, 2024
On Inauguration Day 2017, as President Trump raised his right hand and took the oath of office, I was sitting behind him with the Congressional delegation, watching the historic moment, while in the distance, smoke was rising above Washington, DC.
Antifa thugs, dressed in black and faces masked, terrorized the streets, smashing windows, setting fires, and assaulting citizens. These were not peaceful protests. They were acts of coordinated domestic political terrorism. And they were given a pass.
FLASHBACK: Democrats rioted and attacked Trump supporters, threw explosives…destroyed buildings, smashed cars and set them on fire on inauguration day 2017.
But that’s fine. pic.twitter.com/fRhzxyO8oJ
— suzy (@Suzy_1776) March 13, 2023
That same year, the hatred became personal. In the spring of 2017, I stood on a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia with fellow Members of Congress, Republicans, practicing for the annual charity game.
A deranged left-wing extremist, radicalized by what he had seen on cable news and online echo chambers, opened fire on all of us.
He nearly killed my friend and colleague, Majority Whip Steve Scalise and Matt Mika, while wounding several others. It was a miracle no one died. The shooter had a hit list of Republican lawmakers in his pocket.
Yet the FBI, in its so-called investigation, told us it wasn’t politically motivated. They chalked it up to “suicide by cop.” When they briefed us, their crime scene map was wrong. Their facts were wrong.
Their conclusion was deliberately dishonest. It was the first time I realized that even our own FBI had been infiltrated by a political agenda and bias. The truth was inconvenient to the narrative, so they buried it.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is grateful that Kash Patel released all documents related to the Congressional Baseball Game shooting in 2017.
“When we first saw the FBI report… they initially classified it as suicide by cop!” – @SteveScalise pic.twitter.com/c8n3FtDchB
— Alec Lace (@AlecLace) March 27, 2025
Meanwhile, across the country, the media sanitized the violence. “Mostly peaceful protests,” they said, even as our beautiful cities burned. They excused, and at times, even encouraged the mob tactics used to silence conservatives.
Town halls became war zones. Angry leftist mobs were dispatched to shout down Republican members of Congress at their townhalls and district meetings, threaten their families, and intimidate constituents. This was not activism. It was harassment. It was terrorism.
When Jeff Sessions recused himself as Attorney General, the President lost control of his own Department of Justice. The internal war against him escalated.
The collusion hoax gave way to the Mueller investigation, then to the Ukraine phone call, then to impeachment. None of it ever held water. But truth didn’t matter. This was never about policy. It was about power, raw, unchecked, and unrelenting.
The 2018 midterms were lost before they began. The media and the Democrats had so poisoned the political well, had so thoroughly villainized the President and his party, that Republican candidates were running into hurricane-force headwinds.
I had won my district by 16 points in each cycle. In 2018, I lost by 4. My opponent stood before the NAACP and openly said she put “party over people.” The media wouldn’t report it. They claimed it was a misstatement. It wasn’t. It was a confession.
That year, Democrats campaigned on fear. They said Republicans were to blame for mass shootings, for stripping Americans of health care, for hurting women, for siding with Big Pharma, for every conceivable injustice. It was all fiction. But it worked.
They seized control of the House, the Senate, and the White House. And what did they do with it? Nothing. Not a single bill was passed to remedy any of those issues. Because solving problems was never the point. The point was control.
In retrospect, every bit of this chaos, the violence, the division, the lies, the loss of trust in our institutions, can be traced back to the lie of Russian collusion. It was the match that lit the fire.
And the architects of that lie, those who weaponized it, who fanned the flames, who leaked it to the media and sold it to the public as gospel, must be held accountable.
This was not politics as usual. This was a coordinated political warfare campaign against a sitting President and the people who elected him. It did real damage, deep, lasting damage, to our country.
It shredded the American people’s trust in their institutions, their elections, and one another. And the people who did this walked away believing they would never face consequences.
That must end.
If we are to preserve our Republic, we need to have the courage to demand accountability, no matter how high the office or how powerful the name.
Anyone who knowingly pushed this lie, anyone in government or media who used their position to deceive the public, disrupt our democracy, or destroy lives for political gain, needs to be prosecuted.
This is not vengeance. It’s justice. It’s the bare minimum we owe to the generations who built this country, to those who still believe in its promise, and to the future we are trying to protect.
The American people deserve the truth. And they deserve to see it fearlessly defended.
-Former US Congressman Michael D. Bishop
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