As part of his 2024 candidacy, Donald Trump has gone further than in his previous campaigns to sketch out some post-election ideas. To be sure, the former president proposals aren’t exactly detailed governing blueprints, but the Republican has released some videos in recent months talking up assorted far-right priorities.
But as notable as those vague goals are, let’s not miss the forest for the trees. Trump’s principal focus isn’t on vague policy measures; it’s on revenge. The Washington Post reported:
Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.
To the extent that GOP lawmakers are still concerned about the federal government being “weaponized,” I can only hope they saw the article.
According to the Post’s reporting, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, Trump has created an enemies list of sorts, and it’s his hope that the Justice Department will investigate his targets.
The list reportedly includes former White House chief of staff John Kelly, former Attorney General William Barr, former Team Trump attorney Ty Cobb, and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark Milley. All four have the same thing in common: They were once a part of Trump’s team; they later criticized him; and he now wants to act on his self-pitying sense of grievance by using the levers of federal power to retaliate.
Of course, as part of this approach, the Republican wouldn’t just target his former allies. The Post added that Trump intends to appoint a prosecutor to go after President Joe Biden and his family, and the former president has “talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department.”
In the United States, we’re supposed to cherish certain norms about separating politics from prosecutorial decision-making. By all appearances, Team Trump intends to deliberately obliterate those norms and replace them with something far more radical.
Former White House budget director Russel Vought told the Post, “You don’t need a statutory change at all, you need a mind-set change.”
This is the same Vought who recently told The New York Times that Team Trump intends to hire right-wing attorneys well to the right of Federalist Society members. “The Federalist Society doesn’t know what time it is,” he said, using a phrase of increasing far-right significance.
All of this is part of an initiative known as “Project 2025,” which, as the Times reported in July intends to “alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House.” As we’ve discussed, the vision is not lacking in ambition. It also, evidently, includes retaliating against those on the Republican’s enemies list. The stakes in the 2024 race couldn’t be much more obvious. 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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