Back in January 2024, Donald Trump made the case during an Iowa town hall that, as much as he might like to exact vengeance on his enemies, he would simply be too busy as president.
“I’m not going to have time for retribution,” he said then.
So much for that.
This week, the Trump administration indicted Letitia James, the New York attorney general who sued him for fraud, and arraigned James Comey, the former F.B.I. director who the president has feuded with for years. Plus, Trump called for the jailing of two Democratic officials, Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago, who have opposed his efforts to deploy the military there.
The president has certainly been busy securing a peace deal in Gaza, navigating a government shutdown and ordering extraordinary troop deployments in U.S. cities to support his immigration agenda. But, unshackled by the political calculations he made as a candidate in Iowa, Trump and his allies have made clear that targeting his perceived opponents for investigation and indictment is a priority.
A list of enemies
The notion that Trump is vengeful is hardly new to anyone who has paid attention to American politics over the past decade.
“My motto is always get even,” he wrote in a 2007 book. “When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.”
In 2016, just as he was securing the Republican presidential nomination for the first time, Trump mused that his favorite Bible verse was about “an eye for an eye.”
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