Donald Trump has for decades trafficked in the language of vengeance, from his days as a New York developer vowing “an eye for an eye” in the real estate business to ticking through an enemies ledger in 2022 as he sought to oust every last Republican who voted for his impeachment. “Four down and...
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Trump is all about destroying our country from within. He wants us divided. "us" against "them" is what he is all about. He wants to preside over the United States again in 2024 based off of spite.
Framing the 2024 election as a dire moment in an us-versus-them struggle — “the final battle,” as he put it — Trump charged forward in an uncharted direction for American politics, talking openly about leveraging the power of the presidency for political reprisals.
The notion that Trump’s supporters could be spurred to violence is no longer hypothetical, as it was in 2016 when he urged a rally audience to “knock the crap out of” hecklers. The attack on the Capitol underscored that his most fanatical followers took his falsehoods and claims of victimhood seriously — and were willing to act on them.
Donald Trump has for decades trafficked in the language of vengeance, from his days as a New York developer vowing “an eye for an eye” in the real estate business to ticking through an enemies ledger in 2022 as he sought to oust every last Republican who voted for his impeachment. “Four down and six to go,” he cheered in a statement as one went down to defeat.
Trump’s speech on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference was striking for how explicitly he signaled that any return trip to the White House would amount to a term of spite.
“It would be, first and foremost, getting back at the people he thinks deserve some kind of punishment for not doing what he tells them to do,” Bolton said. “And it’s a big group of people.”
Facing investigations in two states and in two cases overseen by the Justice Department, Trump repeatedly insisted that the judicial system should not be trusted, holding himself and his supporters up as the true arbiters of justice. Trump said the same day that he would not exit the presidential race if he were indicted.
Bolton pointed to another part of Trump’s speech: “This is it. Either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country.”
“I think that’s also a signal that he’s not going to accept a second defeat, the same way he didn’t accept the first defeat,” Bolton said of Trump’s election lies. Bolton suggested Trump’s efforts to stay in power were not a well-oiled plan, but a series of day-to-day impulses he was acting on. But what Trump is saying now, Bolton said, is different.
In essence, Bolton said, the former president is “pretty much calling for something close to civil insurrection.”
Planning is already underway for 2025 should Trump win the White House again. Advisers have discussed reimposing a Trump-era executive order, known as Schedule F, that would give the president vast power to replace what have traditionally been civil service workers embedded across the federal bureaucracy.
“This is the final battle,” Trump said Saturday. “They know it, I know it, you know it, everybody knows it.”
“He’s saying it’s a war,” he said. “There is not law versus chaos, there is just him versus his enemies,
your enemies.”
Demanding unconditional loyalty — and promising retaliation if he doesn’t get it — has been so much a fixture of his career that former employees at his company often say the public still doesn’t fully understand what he is capable of.
“If given the opportunity, I will get even with some people that were disloyal to me,” Trump told Charlie Rose in a November 1992 interview about those who had crossed him during his recent financial struggles.
One dissident member of a board he dealt with, Trump said, was finally removed “after being hit over the head with a cannon.”
“What was the cannon?” Rose asked.
“The cannon,” Trump replied, “was me.”
What an unhinged drama queen crybaby. Trump is a collection of faults stitched together by threads of insecurity
