Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, “I truly wish people would remember that all of these “trials” are concocted and run by the Crooked Joe Biden White House, and DOJ, for the purpose of Election Interference and damaging Crooked’s Political Opponent, ME, as much as possible. These are not legitimate trials, they are merely part of an illegal POLITICAL WITCH HUNT the likes of which our Country has never seen before! MAGA2024.”
New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman cast doubt on former President Donald Trump’s recent attempts to moderate his rhetoric about revenge, asserting that he remains committed to seeking “retribution” if he wins reelection.
Trump has made “retribution” a key theme of his campaign. In an interview with Dr. Phil McGraw, Trump acknowledged that “revenge does take time” and sometimes “can be justified.” However, he also included messages suggesting that “success” would be the revenge he seeks.
During Friday’s edition of CNN’s The Lead, host Phil Mattingly noted Trump’s tendency to dial back his inflammatory rhetoric and asked Haberman if this instance was any different. Haberman confirmed that Trump’s desire for revenge remains strong.
MATTINGLY: Maggie, my question at this point is not whether or not he’s talking about revenge, whether or not he wants revenge. He did it in his first term. He said it repeatedly in this campaign, but in the past when he’s said it, he’s kind of tried to pivot a couple of days later saying, no, no, my — the real revenge will be the success of the American people as advisers have said, the same thing. They’re not even trying to hedge at this point.
Is that fair?
MAGGIE HABERMAN: I don’t think his advisors, at least some of them are especially happy with how explicit he’s being right now, but explicit he is being. And I think that we have seen for eight years, people come up with rationalizations for why you shouldn’t take him at his word when he is saying what he is going to do.
Now, he was prevented from doing what he wanted to do at various points when he was president previously and he went into office saying he didn’t want to hurt the Clintons anymore, but then within months, he was talking to Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, about reopening and investigation into Hillary Clinton. He wanted John Kerry prosecuted, I mean, you can go down the list. And so, he wants James Comey prosecuted.
There is no reason to think that any of those desires would change. And what he is looking for and Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and I’ve written about this is lawyers who will help him get to a yes on various fronts in a second administration. He is talking about eroding the post-Watergate norm of justice department independence. And so I don’t see any reason why people would not believe him and his allies when they say this?
MATTINGLY: Can we dig it on this a little bit? Because again, to your point I feel like you talked to Republicans and the say, well he, said this in the past, so they talked to Republicans and say, well, he should be pissed about what happened because they don’t like the New York case. This is different because of who’s going to be around to and the kind of the guardrails that have either been winnowed, diminished, or don’t exist anymore if he’s in a second for years of office.
What authority does he have as president if people say yes to him?
HABERMAN: Look, so, the one thing, there are plenty of people who say that he has a right to be upset with the New York case and that they think it shouldn’t have been brought in the first place, and that he has a right to be upset with the outcome. Number one, in terms of the outcome will never know whether having a better defense plan might have actually won that case, but they didn’t really have one. And maybe it wasn’t winnable anyway.
But there’s a difference between being upset about the outcome of a case and saying, therefore, I’m going to go after everybody.
Number one, you have to have bases for crimes. We can’t just go and manufacturer events. Number one, the argument against Manhattan cases that the law was contorted in a way to make it possible.
MATTINGLY: Yeah.
HABERMAN: What he can do is he can order the Justice Department to open various investigations. Again, they would have to have grounds, but they could do that.
What his allies are calling for right now is that state attorneys general or local Republican district attorneys who might have some overlay with the aspects of current investigations into Trump or his allies should therefore open investigations into the investigators. And that is something that we have seen before. Remember the Durham investigation was all about investigating the Russia investigation into the Trump campaign.
That’s what they’re calling for before he gets an office. Once he is an office, the DOJ is sort of a black hole that he you can use.
MATTINGLY: How — we’ve seen from his allies. You guys wrote a great story, you and Swan and Charlie about his allies are being very explicit about the revenge tour that they would like Trump to go on. How serious is he about that? How much is this focal point for him right now?
HABERMAN: It’s very much a focal point for him right now. I mean, again, he was — Sean Hannity, who is a Trump friend, offered him multiple opportunities to say, no, no, no, I don’t think that we should use the system against our enemies and Trump just wouldn’t do it. And he was actually more explicit in that clip you played with Dr. Phil.
Trump might be tempering somewhat his language publicly, but he is very focused on behind the scenes. He does want to see retribution. He is not in a happy place.
