The footage is from a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, room SH-216. The witness: Elissa Slotkin, then a Pentagon official, nameplate reading "MS. SLOTKIN." The questioner: John McCain, in full prosecutorial mode.
McCain pressed her on whether she had supported leaving a stabilizing force behind in Iraq. He cited Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Secretary Robert Gates, General David Petraeus — the heavyweights who warned that a full withdrawal would open the door to exactly what happened. And he challenged her claim that the Obama administration had genuinely tried to negotiate a residual force, accusing her of misleading Congress and covering for a withdrawal decision that helped enable ISIS.
Slotkin's defense: she was "disturbed" by what ISIS was able to do. She supported the surge. She'd worked at the National Security Council under Bush when the surge decision was made. Conditions in Iraq, she said, were better by early summer — but still required work.
Now rewind to this month: the same Elissa Slotkin, now a senator, at a town hall comparing President Trump to Saddam Hussein. The resurfaced hearing puts that rhetoric in a harsh light. When McCain demanded accountability for the policies that let ISIS metastasize — policies she defended — she called it disturbing. When she wants an applause line today, she reaches for a dictator.
Her defenders will say the hearing was years ago, that she served her country, that McCain was grandstanding. Fine. Watch the tape yourself. The questions were specific. The answers were evasive. And the contrast with this week's Saddam talk writes itself.