Susan Rice, President Joe Biden's former domestic policy chief, went on a podcast with former Democratic prosecutor Preet Bharara and delivered what amounted to a threat against every business, university, law firm, and individual who has cooperated with the Trump administration.
"A very prominent public figure, who has served at nearly the very highest levels, once told me … 'Revenge is best served cold,' and the older I get, the more I see the wisdom of that."
Corporate America, she warned, made a mistake by engaging with the current administration:
"When it comes to the elites, you know, the corporate interests, the law firms, the universities, the media … it's not going to end well for them, for those that decided that they would act in their perceived very narrow self-interest, which I would underscore, is very short-term self-interest, and, you know, take a knee to Trump."
That's not analysis. That's a threat list.
Rice didn't leave it at implication. She spelled out what Democrats intend to do when they regain power, and she did so with the confidence of someone who believes that day is coming soon.
"And I can tell you, Preet, as I talk to leaders in Washington, leaders in our party, leaders in the states, if these corporations think that the Democrats when they come back in power are going to, you know, play by the old rules and 'Never mind, we'll forgive you for all the people you fired, all the policies and principles you violated, all the laws you've skirted.'"
She continued:
"I think they've got another thing coming … they're going to be surprised. Democrats have had a bellyful, and we're not going to play by, you know, the old set of rules."
And then the phrase that ties it all together: "We're not going to be suckers … there will be an accountability agenda."
Notice what Rice is actually saying. She's not describing policy disagreements. She's not outlining a legislative counter-agenda. She's promising retribution against private citizens and institutions for the crime of cooperating with a duly elected president. Companies that followed the law, law firms that represented clients, and universities that engaged with the administration: all of them are now on a list.
This is the party that spent four years lecturing the country about threats to democratic norms.
In a separate portion of the interview, Rice attempted what has become a familiar Democratic exercise: acknowledging the border problem just enough to seem credible, while conceding nothing on the policies that created it.
"We need to have strong borders. I come from a national security background. I understand the importance of sovereignty and territorial integrity and national defense. We need to have strong borders, and we need to ensure that we, like other countries, have control of our borders."
That sounds reasonable for exactly as long as it takes to reach the next sentence, where Rice pivoted to the real agenda. She pushed for a "process" to give "regularized and normalized status" to the millions of illegal immigrants living in the country, describing them as people who "have lived here, worked here, paid taxes, been lawful." She framed this as a continuation of the Obama-era 2013 comprehensive immigration reform effort.
She also insisted that legal immigration pathways be "open and that are well greased for those who choose to come here."
So in a single interview, Rice managed to:
This is not a policy evolution. It's the same open-borders framework dressed in national security language. According to Bretibart, Rice served as Biden's top domestic policy adviser from January 2021 to May 2023. The border crisis didn't happen to her. It happened under her.
Perhaps the most revealing moment came when Rice made her case for why Americans essentially have no right to limit immigration. Her argument rested on ancestry:
"We are a nation of immigrants, and unless you are of Native American descent or African American descent — like me, and actually I'm both, but came and came here against your will, or came here, or, you know, many, many eons before the first European settlers — you came as an immigrant. I also have an immigrant background — my mother's parents were immigrants from Jamaica who came to the United States in 1912."
The logic here is worth unpacking, because it's the same logic the left has deployed for years to shut down any debate about immigration enforcement. The argument goes: because your ancestors were immigrants, you have no standing to enforce borders now. It treats a sovereign nation's immigration policy as an act of hypocrisy rather than a basic function of governance.
Every nation on earth was settled by people who came from somewhere else. That doesn't obligate any of them to maintain open borders in perpetuity. The fact that Rice's grandparents came from Jamaica legally in 1912 is a wonderful family story. It is not an argument against distinguishing between legal and illegal immigration in 2026.
Rice also acknowledged, perhaps inadvertently, that Trump's border enforcement has worked. She complained that he "has turned everything on its head" and "jettisoned almost all legal pathways to come to this country." She warned it would damage farmers, construction, high tech, and the medical industry.
But embedded in that complaint is an admission: the flow has stopped. The policies Rice helped craft from 2021 to 2023 produced chaos. The policies she's attacking produced results. Her objection isn't that enforcement failed. It's that enforcement succeeded, and she doesn't like the implications.
Rice predicted that Trump's immigration stance "is not popular" and that "there is likely to be a swing in the other direction." Voters, of course, already swung in November 2024. They swung toward the candidate who promised enforcement. Rice watched her own policy accomplishments get repudiated at the ballot box and responded not with reflection but with a revenge fantasy.
"They're going to be held accountable by those who come in opposition to Trump and win at the ballot box."
That's the clearest statement of what the modern Democratic Party is becoming. Not a party of ideas competing for votes, but a party compiling lists and waiting for its turn to punish.
The voters already spoke. Rice just wasn't listening.
