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What the United States needs is more revenge

Published on 30 Comments on What the United States needs is more revenge

The Washington Post says today that a second Trump term would be all about revenge and more revenge:

In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. The former president has frequently made corruption accusations against them that are not supported by available evidence.

....It is unclear what alleged crimes or evidence Trump would claim to justify investigating his named targets.

Trump seems to have forgotten that he already appointed a prosecutor to go after at least part of Joe Biden's family. That would be David Weiss, now a special counsel prosecuting Hunter Biden. During the election campaign of 2020 Trump tried to broaden this, urging Attorney General Bill Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate Biden and his entire family. Barr wouldn't do it, which is one reason he's now on Trump's revenge list.

But what about the tradition of separating the Justice Department from political interference? Pffft. That's only been a "tradition" since Nixon—in fact, not even a tradition according to Trump pal Russ Vought:

“You don’t need a statutory change at all, you need a mind-set change,” Vought said in an interview. “You need an attorney general and a White House Counsel’s Office that don’t view themselves as trying to protect the department from the president.”

There you have it. Easy peasy.

30 thoughts on “What the United States needs is more revenge”

    2. MeredithChasity

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  2. jte21

    And, according to a big NYT poll out this weekend, a lot of Americans, including former Biden voters, listen to this and go "Eh, wev."

    Shit, we're in for a bumpy ride this year.

  3. Justin

    Bring it on! I won’t vote for it but it sure seems like many of my neighbors and coworkers are ready to. No one really believes it will be that bad. Certainly not for a person like me. I’m not politically active and my job is pretty unobjectionable. And look, half this country sucks anyway. If they want to blow it up, have at it. I’m thinking they will suffer far more than me.

    2. Yehouda

      "No one really believes it will be that bad. "
      That is actually correct belief. It is not going to be that bad, it is going to be much worse than that.
      Trump model of government is a the Kim/Xi/Putin model, and he will try to implement it.
      If you are lucky, it will lead to a civil war.
      If not, he will succeed.

      1. Justin

        Yeah - but can you be more specific? I get it, really. The media will be nuts. Arabs and Jews are going at each other now. Is that a preview of some version of civil unrest? I just don’t see it. No one cares that much anymore. Trump loving police all over the country are going to start arresting liberals? Heck, they are afraid to arrest actual criminals now.

        All that said, I would not want to be a career civil servant with the Federal government. Polish up that resume.

        1. Yehouda

          He will use the executive power to terrorize people to do what he wants, and effectively stop democracy. Similar to the process that Putin used in Russia.
          Killing journalists he already said is an acceptable action. Jailing potential opponents he obviously is going to do. Declaring elections where he or his people lost as invalid and simply ignore them he already tried.
          He will do anything else that is required to achieve his purpose, because he doesn't have any inhibitions and doesn't care about anybody.
          He really wants to destroy democracy, and will try to achieve it.

          "Trump loving police all over the country are going to start arresting liberals? "

          Yes, definitely. Not obly liberals, anybody that doesn't do what Trump wants.

          People that thinks it is just going to be like the first term multiply by some factor are hopelessly optimistic. This time he is going to go all the way.

    3. Jim Carey

      Justin ... your conclusion is based on the mistaken assumption that a divide and conquer strategy is a two step process. It is a three step process. Step One is divide. Step two is conquer. Step three is return to Step One and repeat.

      "No one really believes it will be that bad. Certainly not for a person like me."

      That was a common sentiment of Putin supporters at one point, but you can't ask them what they think now because they were killed.

    4. J. Frank Parnell

      Yah, old Adolph wrote a lot of pretty shocking stuff (so shocking it was expurgated from the English edition of Mein Kampf), but the serious people said he would moderate once he was in office. Turns out he didn’t, but you can’t say all Germans suffered, probably only about 99.999% did.

  4. cld

    Intelligence is detail. If you have a lot of detail in paranoia or malice is that really virtue?

    Isn't it more a kind of public disability, something disabling and detrimental
    for society as a whole?

    If you exhibit applied paranoia or applied malice what can that create but arbitrary injury?

    We don't now exclude anyone from public life for medical reasons, but maybe it's time to think about it.

  5. Davis X. Machina

    I'm sure our Founders would concur.

    "For my friends, anything. For my enemies, the law" is, after all, pretty easy to derive from basic Enlightenment principles.

  6. Five Parrots in a Shoe

    "“You don’t need a statutory change at all, you need a mind-set change,” Vought said in an interview."

    Sadly, Vought is correct. Democracy cannot function without mutually-agreed norms of behavior. This is why Trump is so dangerous to democracy - norms mean nothing to him.

    1. Yehouda

      It is worse than that, because truth also means nothing to him, which also means that the law means nothing, because you can always tell enough lies to make what you do "perfectly legal".
      At the moment judges and law enforcement authorities can try to deal with him, but as president nothing will stop him except the prospect of counter-violence (which may or may not work).

    1. cld

      from the article,

      . . .
      Speaker of the House Mike Johnson admitted that he and his son monitored each other’s porn intake in a resurfaced clip from 2022.

      During a conversation on the “War on Technology” at Benton, Louisiana’s Cypress Baptist Church — unearthed by X user Receipt Maven last week — the Louisiana representative talked about how he installed “accountability software” called Covenant Eyes on his devices in order to abstain from internet porn and other unsavory websites.

      “It scans all the activity on your phone, or your devices, your laptop, what have you; we do all of it,” Johnson told the panel about the app.

      “It sends a report to your accountability partner. My accountability partner right now is Jack, my son. He’s 17. So he and I get a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices, once a week. If anything objectionable comes up, your accountability partner gets an immediate notice. I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate.”
      . . . .

      Well, I am proud to tell ya, Mike, your 17 year old has a different phone.

      1. cld

        Now that I'm thinking about it, an obvious piece of crap software like 'Covenant Eyes', made for the complete idiot market, is going to be like a hackers daydream.

        Is this the real reason he doesn't have a bank account, because some Russian gangster wiped him out but he's still too dumb and anxiety-riddled to delete Covenant Eyes?

        Think of the blackmail you could gather on these dopes!

      2. Bardi

        I told my twelve year old granddaughter that story and that is the first thing she said, the son has an additional/different phone.

    2. J. Frank Parnell

      Great, we have a Speaker of the House who doesn’t have the moral strength to resist becoming a porn hound without the help of an electronic nanny.

  8. Joseph Harbin

    Some wise guy long ago gave a warning to the country:

    Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

    This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

    The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

    Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

    That's George Washington in his Farewell Address.

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  10. D_Ohrk_E1

    Malicious prosecution would result in sanctions and possible disbarment.

    It would also result in amping up the partisanship attacks that would turn cops against cops and judges against judges. Political violence will increase and it'll eventually touch Trump.

    Blowback's a bitch, which is why most sane people know to contain their excesses. Trump's not sane.

  11. Dana Decker

    "It is unclear what alleged crimes or evidence Trump would claim to justify investigating his named targets"

    Dinesh D'Souza will find it. You can be sure of that.

  12. bebopman

    You mean the prez who tried to deny disaster aid to California and remove a key defense facility from Colorado to Alabama etc etc, just because he lost big in those states, is not gonna be better in a second term? I’m surprised!

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