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Trump’s vendetta agenda shows an undimmed lust for retribution

Right now, you really don’t want to be on the wrong side of Donald Trump. And unlike eight years ago the signs are that his detractors are running for cover, writes Jon Sopel

Saturday 25 January 2025 07:56 EST
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Mark Milley finally responds to Trump’s suggestion he should be ‘executed’ for ‘treason’

It was March 2023, and Donald Trump was in Waco, Texas – a town forever associated with the massacre and inferno that engulfed the Branch Davidian sect, resulting in 76 deaths after a lengthy stand-off with law enforcement officials. That took place exactly 30 years before Trump visited the city.

Donald Trump that night was also in an incendiary mood. He rained down fire on his political opponents. “I am your warrior. I am your justice,” he declared. “For those who have been wronged and betrayed…I am your retribution.”

Well, you can’t say he isn’t being true to his word, as five days into his presidency his lust for retribution is undimmed. Forget revenge being a dish best served cold, Trump is serving it up piping hot – and lashings of it.

It really is “promise made, promise delivered,” as politicians are wont to say.

Now, imagine for a moment you have just been sworn in as president, and the armoured Cadillac drives you back to the White House. There, national security officials will be waiting to brief you on the latest world hotspots and the covert operations that might need your approval. There will be decisions needed on domestic policy: LA fires, the southern border – and the full panoply of unpalatable choices that land with a thud on the Resolute desk, where we all know the buck stops. It must be overwhelming. Stressful. When all you want to do is start implementing the policies that will shape your presidency.

But Donald Trump had other ideas. Let us just gallop through some of the things he’s found time for in that crowded schedule. If you wanted to sing it you could do it to “The Twelve Days of Christmas“– although it wouldn’t scan that well.

On the first day of his presidency, Trump revoked the security clearance of 51 national security officials who had opined that the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop had been a classic Russian misinformation campaign. And that means they’ve effectively been fired.

On the second day of his presidency, Trump announced on his platform, Truth Social, that he was “actively in the process of identifying and removing over a thousand presidential appointees from the previous administration”, in what – in effect – is a mass purge.

General Mark Milley’s portrait was removed from the walls of the Pentagon on Monday, shortly after Donald Trump was sworn in to office
General Mark Milley’s portrait was removed from the walls of the Pentagon on Monday, shortly after Donald Trump was sworn in to office (AP)

Among those to be culled was the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley who, during Trump’s first term, was America’s top soldier. Milley had committed the crime of speaking out against Trump’s fitness for office. Trump in return had threatened to prosecute Milley for treason.

Such was the level of animus and threat that Joe Biden, on the way out of the White House, gave Milley a pre-emptive pardon. At the Pentagon hang the portraits of the previous heads of the military. The one of Milley was removed on Inauguration Day.

Another critic of the incoming president – who, like Milley, had served alongside Donald Trump in his first term – was John Bolton. For 17 months, he was Donald Trump’s national security advisor. Bolton served in successive Republican administrations from the Reagan years onwards. He is waspish and a defence hawk, and though you may not like him or his policies, he has carried out the wishes of the presidents he has served. The only offence I can find is the absurd ferret of a moustache he has under his nose.

In 2022, a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was charged by the US Justice Department with an assassination plot against Bolton – most likely revenge for Bolton’s support of the 2020 US strike against Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Revolutionary Guard’s overseas force.

As a result, Bolton was given a Secret Service security detail. In one of his first acts as president, Donald Trump has removed the bodyguards protecting Bolton. It is hard to see that as anything other than pure vindictiveness and malice. On Thursday TheNew York Times reported he had yanked the security detail from his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, too. Pompeo, like Bolton, continues to face death threats from Iranians.

And in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Trump mused that Biden didn’t pardon himself, so maybe some of the torture that he’s suffered should be meted out to the outgoing president.

This is where I move from journalist to amateur psychologist, so take what I say with a pinch of salt. But over the decade of watching Trump more closely than I have any other politician in my life, it is obvious that he has a highly – overly – developed persecution complex. He sees himself entirely as the person who has been wronged, never the author of his problems. In his mind, he is blameless. The two impeachments, the 34 felony convictions, the pile of other criminal indictments – they were all proof that bad, nasty people wanted to do him down. He struggles to compute that not everyone adores him.

But with that persecution complex comes a desire to hunt down and slay his enemies. There is no letting bygones be bygones. Turning the other cheek is not part of his MO. He is an eye-for-an-eye man, however ugly that might be.

At the same time as punishing his critics, he is rewarding those who rioted on January 6, which resulted in injuries to more than 100 police officers. Now free from prison, having been pardoned by Trump, the paramilitary leaders who orchestrated the attempted insurrection have expressed their desire for vengeance on the people who put them behind bars. Would that have the president’s support?

It is hard to reconcile this with the man who has berated social media platforms for their failure to uphold the principles of free speech but wants to punish those who’ve dared to criticise him. And if he believes free speech is absolute, why ask regulators to go after America’s most famous media companies for their treatment of him? The freedom of the press could be the next target.

It may be pure coincidence, but The Washington Post has just dropped its punchy slogan that “democracy dies in darkness” to be replaced by the anodyne “riveting storytelling for all of America”. It might be pure coincidence that Meta has dropped its fact-checking and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies, along with many other corporations. But coincidence may play no part in it whatsoever.

Right now, you really don’t want to be on the wrong side of Donald Trump. If you are, you can feel certain he’s going to come after you. And right now – unlike eight years ago – the signs are that his detractors are running for cover.

Machiavelli wrote that it’s better to be feared than loved. Trump wants both. But he’ll settle for fear as a fallback.

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