Donald Trump has always made it clear: if you cross him, he’ll come after you. Back in 1992, he told Charlie Rose, “I love getting even with people.” And he’s stuck to that idea ever since.
When Trump first ran for president in 2015, he talked about punishing his enemies. He even said Hillary Clinton should be jailed over her email controversy. It was obvious even then that he saw the presidency as a way to get revenge.
During his first term, Trump tried to get the Justice Department to go after Clinton and former FBI director James Comey. His White House lawyer, Don McGahn, told him he wasn’t allowed to do that, so it didn’t happen. Still, Trump got his Attorney General, Bill Barr, to assign someone to investigate the Russia investigation. After years of effort, they found nothing wrong.
By the time Trump launched his third campaign in 2023, he was louder and more direct. At a big conservative event (CPAC), he said:
“In 2016, I said: I am your voice. Today I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.”
By then, Trump had a long list of complaints—he’d been sued, charged with crimes, and constantly under legal fire. Though he’s had legal trouble for years, and has been caught behaving badly, he convinced his followers it was all political and unfair. He told them the 2020 election was stolen and millions believed it.
At a 2023 rally in Waco, Texas near where the FBI once raided a cult Trump repeated his “I am your retribution” speech and said Biden was using the legal system like a dictator from Stalin’s time. He called all investigations against him fake and corrupt.
Trump’s inner circle, including people like Stephen Miller, often speak in dramatic and emotional terms to drive the message home.
Even when people tried to get Trump to say he wasn’t out for revenge, he refused. Fox News’ Sean Hannity and even Dr. Phil gave him chances to sound more balanced, but he didn’t take them. In fact, he often said he regretted not jailing Hillary Clinton.
Some Republicans claimed Trump wouldn’t actually try to punish people. Sometimes he even said, “My revenge will be success.” But his actions told a different story.
Now that Trump is back in the White House, things have changed. He’s erased the line between himself and the Justice Department. His new Attorney General, Pam Bondi, is a loyal supporter. She’s been attacking judges who rule against Trump and firing prosecutors who worked on the Capitol riot cases.
She’s also gone after big law firms that represented Trump’s critics threatening their security clearance and pressuring them to help his agenda for free. Many firms gave in, agreeing to do hundreds of millions of dollars in legal work for the government.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “Big Law keeps bowing to Trump because they know they were wrong.”
Now, Trump is going even further. This week, he signed official memos ordering investigations into two people from his first term who spoke out against him.
One is Christopher Krebs, a cybersecurity expert who said the 2020 election was safe and secure contradicting Trump’s claims of fraud. Trump accused him of leaking classified info and took away his security clearance. He even did the same to Krebs’ coworkers, even though they had nothing to do with it.
The other is Miles Taylor, a former official at Homeland Security who wrote an anonymous op-ed in 2018 saying people inside the government were working to stop Trump from doing dangerous things. Trump now says Taylor committed “treason” and wants him investigated too.
Both men are being targeted not for crimes, but for speaking against Trump. Free speech? That doesn’t seem to apply if you criticize him.
The investigations probably won’t go anywhere legally. Trump could’ve just told Bondi to do it privately. But by making it public, he’s sending a warning. Krebs and Taylor are Republicans people he hired and he sees them as traitors. And in Trump’s world, that’s the worst thing you can be.
Right now, he’s going after Republicans. But Democrats? They’re almost certainly next.
