“I Love Getting Even.”

Right-wing media and Trump handlers are trying to soft pedal his open threats of retribution if reelected. We shouldn’t let them.

This week Donald Trump appeared for interviews with a panel from Fox, on Newsmax, with self-described Trump donor Dr. Phil, and of course a one-on-one with chief propagandist, Sean Hannity.

Each of the interviewers threw him a softball: If you’re elected, you won’t really seek revenge on your enemies by prosecuting them right? All that talk of “I am your retribution” was just braggadocio, right?

Not a chance. Given the opportunity to walk back his threats of revenge, Trump stood firm. In fact, he doubled down and explained why revenge against his opponents might be an unfortunate necessity, as if he reluctantly would be required to exact it against those who have sought to hold him to account.

The fact that many of Trump’s allies in the media are trying to get him to soften his position—and that Trump appears unwilling to do so—is telling. Do they really believe Trump is other than who he says he is? 

Those who absurdly claim Trump won’t seek revenge are ignoring the plain statements of his allies who are calling for it explicitly. And they also ignore decades of statements by Trump extolling the virtues and necessity of revenge. 

In today’s piece, I’ll walk through some highlights, or perhaps I should say low points, of Trump’s recent interviews and disturbing responses to questions about retribution. I’ll also walk through earlier statements Trump has made on the subject to drive home the fact that he really is out for revenge.

The revenge tour

Following Trump’s conviction on 34 counts of felony falsification of business records, his allies began beating their chests and promising revenge on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for having charged and ultimately obtained the convictions against their leader. 

As Axios reported, former top Trump advisor and soon-to-be-jailed-convict Steve Bannon made some dire promises for after Trump’s re-election. “Of course [Bragg] should be—and will be—jailed,” Bannon told Axios, saying aloud what many Trump supporters are plotting in private. Bannon elaborated that Bragg could be targeted for violations of equal protection and alleged illegal search and seizure, among “scores of other” laws, and that the investigations should include the Democrats’ “media allies.”

Trump’s allies in Congress were also not shy about wanting to strike back. “Time for Red State AGs and DAs to get busy,” tweeted Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA). And Mike Davis, a former law clerk to Justice Neil Gorsuch who is on the short list for Attorney General in a Trump second term, urged GOP prosecutors in the South to initiate criminal investigations of Democrats for “election interference” for having indicted Trump in the first place.

Trump himself hit the interview circuit following the verdict. Given the widespread calls for revenge by his supporters, Trump was asked whether he intended to weaponize the Justice Department to go after his enemies.

Here is a smattering of what he conveyed.

“Revenge does take time. I will say that. And sometimes revenge can be justified,” he argued to Dr. Phil. “But I have to be honest, sometimes it can.”

In his interview with Sean Hannity, the Fox host asked him point blank whether he would pledge to “restore” equal justice and equal application of our laws (implying falsely that they have not been equally applied to Trump) and “end this practice of weaponization.” The ex-president responded, “You have to do it! But it’s awful — look, I know you want me to say something so nice” but, he added, “I don’t want to look naïve.”

When Trump spoke to Newsmax host Greg Kelly, he suggested that his opponents would have to face prosecution. “So, you know, it’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to, and it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them.”

Notwithstanding these statements, Trump’s spin doctors are seeking to downplay the idea of a vengeance-focused second term for Trump. Former Trump White House spokesperson Kellyanne Conway went on Fox to argue that Trump doesn’t want revenge and that you need only consider that he didn’t go after Hillary Clinton as many of his followers had urged.

This claim is, per usual with Conway, counterfactual nonsense. In 2017, Trump’s Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions launched a sprawling investigation of Clinton’s tenure at the State Department and the Clinton Foundation that, after more than two years of searching, turned up exactly nothing, with no recommendation for criminal charges. And Trump even had to pay nearly $1 million in penalties for pursuing a frivolous lawsuit against Clinton and the DNC, which he accused of racketeering and a vast conspiracy against him.

Even after Trump told him that revenge can sometimes be justified, and then threatened to indict the members of the January 6 Committee, Dr. Phil still insisted on the air that he didn’t think Trump would actually seek revenge. Instead, Dr. Phil remarkably claimed that he had “made progress” with Trump that it was not the right thing for him to do.

Dr. Phil and Sen. Susan Collins should perhaps open a malignant narcissist therapy consultation together and report their amazing progress to the public.

Vengeance through the decades

This effort to soft-pedal Trump’s penchant for retribution flies in the face not only of his recent statements, but as David Corn of Mother Jones noted in his excellent summation, also defies everything Trump has said since the 1990s about his thirst for vengeance. As Corn noted,

During the 2016 campaign, I tried to bring attention to this worrisome facet of Trump’s psychological make-up. I reported many examples of his long-held passion for revenge—including the time he tweeted in 2014 a quote from legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock: “Revenge is sweet and not fattening.”

Corn then laid out his evidence. It’s not only quite compelling, but also explains why revenge matters so much to Trump. In a 2010 interview with journalist Erin Burnett, for example, Trump noted,

If you have a problem, if you have a problem with someone, you have to go after them. And it’s not necessarily to teach that person a lesson. It’s to teach all of the people that are watching a lesson. That you don’t take crap. And if you take crap, you’re just not going to do well…But you can’t take a lot of nonsense from people, you have to go after them.”

At the National Achievers Congress in Sydney, Australia in 2011, for example, Trump told the crowd of a lesson he learned not taught in business school: “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.”

Trump gave a longer version of this in a speech in 2012, reiterating his belief that you can’t look weak to others and saying famously, “You have to hit back.”

One of the things you should do in terms of success: If somebody hits you, you’ve got to hit ’em back five times harder than they ever thought possible. You’ve got to get even. Get even. And the reason, the reason you do, is so important…The reason you do, you have to do it, because if they do that to you, you have to leave a telltale sign that they just can’t take advantage of you. It’s not so much for the person, which does make you feel good, to be honest with you, I’ve done it many times. But other people watch and you know they say, “Well, let’s leave Trump alone,” or “Let’s leave this one,” or “Doris, let’s leave her alone. They fight too hard.” I say it, and it’s so important. You have to, you have to hit back. You have to hit back.

On social media, Trump has been consistent with this theme. He tweeted in 2013, “Always get even. When you are in business, you need to get even with people who screw you. – Think Big.”

As the Washington Post reported, Trump’s thirst for revenge now includes specific names, on a list that would rival Arya Stark’s in Game of Thrones. It now includes those who worked closely with him, including his former chief of staff John Kelly, his former attorney general Bill Barr, his former lawyer Ty Cobb, and retired former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley. And of course, it includes Joe Biden and his family, whom he would go after with the appointment of a Special Prosecutor. 

The job of making all this happen has been outsourced, said the Post, to the people behind Project 2025, which has produced a sprawling blueprint on how to systematically destroy American democracy and replace it with a Christian Nationalist, authoritarian government under Trump. The methods include executive orders, already drafted, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act.

It is imperative that any apologists or soft-pedalers for Trump, should they appear on national media platforms, be confronted with Trump’s current and past statements about revenge and weaponization as well as his plans to go after his enemies using a terrifying expansion of his presidential powers. 

And those who still believe the Republican Party can somehow manage or change Trump and prevent such an abuse of power should be reminded that this is exactly what was said of Trump before 2016. Instead, it was Trump who changed the Republican Party forever and bent it inexorably to his will. And he will use all of the power of that party, if reelected to the White House, to carry out the revenge he is so eager to taste.

Trump himself perhaps said it best, all the way back in 1992 in an interview with journalist Charlie Rose. And he hasn’t changed.

“I love getting even with people,” he declared. 

“You love getting even?” asked an incredulous Rose.

“Oh, absolutely,” Trump laughed. “You don’t believe in the eye for an eye? You do, I know you well enough. I think you do.”

“You will get even with some people?” Rose pressed.

“If given the opportunity,” Trump responded.