President Trump’s vendetta against his adversaries has become a stirring imprint on his return to the Oval Office. It surprises no one who took his campaign rally rhetoric seriously.
“I am your warrior. I am your justice,” he declared. “I am your retribution.”
A foreboding message designed to animate his loyalists, who believed him wronged by his political foes and betrayed by the nation’s justice system for rejecting his cries of a rigged 2020 election while permitting prosecution of his attempts to subvert it.
Opinion polls last fall found that many other Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 dismissed his vengeance talk as campaign bombast. Their concerns centered on high prices, illegal immigrants and foreign wars.
More than 70 days into his second term, he is doing what he said he would do. His election victory, he insists, provided a mandate to deliver on his grievances, reinvent government and eliminate woke social policies.
Trump’s reckoning is mainly focused on unfriendly lawyers, judges, journalists and what he calls rogue actors and corrupt government forces. That’s just about anyone he considers hostile to his past. He says they were out to bury him.
His retribution includes ordering an investigation into accusations the Biden administration weaponized the government against him to punishing law firms that employed lawyers who helped prosecute him to pardoning convicted participants in the Jan. 6 violent attack on the Capitol who tried to re-elect him.
Elon Musk, Trump’s moneybags adviser, handles the messy business of wiping out thousands of “deep state” suspects and other government workers in federal agencies deemed corrupt, bloated or unnecessary. Eventually, Trump replacements will move in.
The overarching aim: Reinvent government in the image of Trump, who sees his legacy as a preeminent president — and don’t you forget it Senate and House Republican majorities. Fall in line or face presidential wrath.
No worry with his Cabinet picks. They march lockstep to his docket, fueling his vanity with ample credit at every opportunity. “We all work with the greatest president in the history of our country,” gushed Attorney General Pam Bondi in introducing Trump at a Justice Department gathering.
Yet to be determined is how Trump’s analysis of the Constitution, his presidential prerogatives and the rule of law play out. Already, federal judges have blocked some of his contentious orders. Twenty-three states, including seven that voted for Trump in November, argued in a lawsuit this week that Trump cannot legally rescind funds approved by Congress for vital public health services.
“He who saves his Country does not violate the law,” Trump posted on Presidents’ Day. The quote traces to Napoleon Bonaparte, early 19th century emperor of France — until exiled to an island after losing the Battle of Waterloo.
The Supreme Court, which expanded the constitutional purview of presidents last summer, appears to be the sole obstacle to what Trump can and cannot do. In the meantime, he wields broad authority to get even and reclaim power from what he considers the corrupt government he inherited.
Trump’s media grudges will also likely end up before the high court. In his State of the Union address a month ago he bragged about halting government censorship and returning free speech to America. But his intimidating actions before he returned to the White House and after belie the assertion.
Here are a few examples of Trump’s media browbeating.
He continues his defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board for jointly awarding the 2018 National Reporting prize to the New York Times and the Washington Post for coverage of Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election Trump won. He claims their stories propagated the false impression Russia colluded with his campaign, an inference the board reviewed and rejected.
Last December, Trump filed a fraud lawsuit against the Des Moines Register newspaper, its parent company Gannett and pollster Ann Selzer for publishing a shocking Iowa poll three days before the November election. It had Trump losing by 3 percentage points to Democrat Kamala Harris. He won the reliably red state by more than 13 points, accusing the paper and its pollster of defrauding voters and election interference.
Samantha Barbas, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law, told the New York Times that Trump’s lawsuits “are not so much geared toward winning as much as threatening the media.
Either way, he’s bent on getting his way. The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and ABC have paid financial homage to his umbrage. CBS is being pressured to do likewise to settle a lawsuit. CNN and MSNBC are frequently in his crosshairs.
The Associated Press, however, has chosen to fight. It has filed a First Amendment freedom of speech lawsuit testing Trump’s blackballing of AP journalists from Oval Office press sessions, Air Force One briefings and other select White House events — punishment for refusing his request to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Trump’s logic is nutty when you consider AP is an international news agency, serving news consumers around the world who only recognize the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico.
Trump has also set his sights on public broadcast media, seeking to end federal funding for National Public Radio and Public TV stations. Both rely on limited funding in larger markets but that’s not the case in rural America. Often the local NPR station is the only source of news, including content vital to farmers.
Wobbling on Trump’s guillotine list are government broadcast outlets under the umbrella of the U.S. Agency for Global Media — such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia. They may soon feel the blade after decades of informing people in authoritarianruled countries about the merits of democracy.
Trump says their programming is too liberal and not apt to tell the American story the way he wants it told. Elon Musk convinced Trump the outlets burn through millions of taxpayer dollars annually and are no longer relevant to the national agenda.
Perhaps that’s the best indication of how Trump defines freedom of speech.
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