A couple of weeks after joining his party’s national ticket, then-Sen. JD Vance was eager to ease the minds of voters concerned about Donald Trump and his threats of retaliation. Trump, the future vice president said at the time, is “not a vengeful guy.”
Shortly after the election, Trump appeared on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” and suggested vengeance wasn’t part of his plans for a second term. “I’m not looking to go back into the past,” he said, adding, “Retribution will be through success.” The Republican president echoed the point in his second inaugural address, declaring, “Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents.”
I have some bad news for anybody who believed any of these claims. The Hill reported:
President Trump on Saturday doubled down on his accusations that former Vice President Harris paid celebrities to endorse her during the 2024 presidential election. The president, echoing previous claims that Harris paid Beyoncé, Oprah and Al Sharpton to support her White House bid throughout the campaign trail, said Harris and the celebrities involved should be ‘prosecuted.’
(Disclosure note: Sharpton hosts a program on MSNBC, my employer.)
I’ve lost count how many times the president has made this claim, which continues to be demonstrably wrong. As for why the Republican interrupted his trip to Scotland to push this falsehood again — which included some all-caps hysterics and a variety of exclamation points — your guess is as good as mine.
I don’t seriously expect anything to come of this, because federal prosecutors know what Trump does not: Bringing criminal charges against political foes based on made-up allegations doesn’t work.
But before that observation brings comfort to anyone, it’s important to acknowledge the broader landscape. The New York Times, assessing Trump’s intensifying campaign of retribution, reported last week, “This is what Washington thought retribution would look like.”
When President Trump started his second term, there were deep fears among current and former Justice Department officials, legal experts and Democrats that Mr. Trump would follow through on his repeated promises to ‘lock up’ or otherwise pursue charges against high-profile figures like Liz Cheney, James B. Comey and former President Barack Obama. Mr. Trump quickly went after perceived enemies — but not always the anticipated ones and often not in the anticipated ways.
The Times’ analysis noted that the Republican has displayed “a willingness to weaponize the federal government” in novel and audacious ways, and there’s ample evidence to bolster the point. Just last week, for example, Trump falsely and repeatedly accused Barack Obama of “treason,” suggesting the former Democratic president should be prosecuted over made-up allegations. Soon after, Trump talked up the idea of prosecuting Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California, too.
That came on the heels of news that the Trump administration had launched criminal investigations into former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, two longtime targets of the president. (Disclosure note: Brennan is a paid contributor to MSNBC and NBC News.)
They’re part of a growing list. In April, for example, Trump signed two first-of-their-kind executive orders that targeted a pair of officials from his first term who defied him. There was barely a pretense in the orders that the targeted former officials — Christopher Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Miles Taylor, a former high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official — had done anything wrong. Indeed, the closer one looked at the stated rationales in support of the directives, the more ridiculous they appeared.
Nevertheless, the president directed Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Homeland Security to launch a “review” into Krebs, while simultaneously ordering DHS to investigate Taylor.
Weeks later, Trump broke new ground again, directing the Justice Department to launch a wide-ranging investigation into Joe Biden and officials in the Democrat’s administration, based on Republican conspiracy theories about the former president’s mental health. It was an unprecedented move: An incumbent American president had never before publicly ordered a federal probe of his predecessor.
There was a degree of irony to the circumstances. After his defeat in the 2020 election, Trump spent years insisting that Biden had ordered an investigation into him — an odd conspiracy theory for which there is literally no evidence — but Trump then did exactly what he falsely accused his predecessor of doing.
Trump also endorsed California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s arrest, before demanding that CNN face criminal prosecution for running reports the White House didn’t like.
And did I mention that, over the last several weeks, a Democratic mayor, a Democratic U.S. House member, the staffer of a different Democratic U.S. House member, a sitting judge and a labor leader have all been criminally charged, detained or taken into custody by Trump administration officials? Because that happened, too. There are also ongoing Trump administration investigations into Media Matters, ActBlue, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York Attorney General Letitia James and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. The president also wants to see Harris, Beyonce and Oprah added to his prosecution list. Last week, the official White House social media account published a weird item with just six words of text: “They came after the wrong man.” The sentence appeared alongside a large image featuring the words, “I was the hunted — NOW I’M THE HUNTER,” attributed to Trump. In other words, a sitting American president, using White House resources to promote North Korea-level propaganda, pushed a twisted message about his determination to seek vengeance against other Americans. I’m disinclined to look away because I’m mindful of the degree to which Trump has surrounded himself with loyalists who will turn his rhetoric into action. As the aforementioned New York Times analysis added: Repeatedly in his first term, Mr. Trump accused his perceived enemies of treason and tried to push the F.B.I. and Justice Department to indict them. He told his chief of staff that he wanted to ‘get the I.R.S.’ on those who crossed him. Many of them were investigated, and two of them were the subjects of highly unusual and invasive audits, but none of them were ever charged. The difference now is that Mr. Trump, much more so than during his first term, is surrounded by aides and cabinet members who often appear willing to follow through on his angriest and most authoritarian impulses. The Times’ report added, “[T]he efforts to target top officials from previous administrations appears to be gaining momentum.” Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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