Donald Trump is turning payback into policy
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. During a debate last summer, when Donald Trump was asked what he meant by saying that as president he would have every right to “go after" his political opponents, he replied, “My retribution is going to be success." His first few weeks back in the job have confirmed what many of his supporters and critics assumed he had in mind: that in office he would define “success" to include retribution. Mr Trump is not just returning to the ways of American presidents before the Watergate scandal, which led to reforms meant to insulate the Justice Department and FBI from presidential pressure.
Those earlier presidents tended to be furtive in their use of government to punish adversaries: Richard Nixon’s “enemies list" was a secret. Mr Trump is up to something new. He not only wants to punish critics and officials, down to the lowliest bureaucrats, who do not embrace him and his priorities.
He wants all America to know he is doing it. Revenge, for him, is best served publicly. His new aides are pulling down official portraits of former aides who crossed him, firing prosecutors and FBI agents who investigated him and demanding the names of thousands more agents involved in the inquiry into the attack on the Capitol on January 6th 2021.
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