Astonishing article from the GUARDIAN from data collected on Trump vis-à-vis his threats and
promises if elected – quite scary stuff with this headline (and formatted to fit the blog):
“Revenge: Analysis of
Trump posts shows relentless focus on punishing his enemies”
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
documents former president’s threats against perceived political opponents.
A major study of Trump’s Truth Social media posts has revealed the
scale of his ambitions to target President Joe Biden, Federal Judges, and other
perceived political enemies if he returns to power.
CREW is a highly respected D.C. watchdog organization that analyzed more than 13,000 messages published by Trump
on his Truth Social platform, They found him vowing revenge, retaliation, and retribution against his foes.
Trump has threatened to use the federal government to go
after Biden during a second Trump administration 25 times since the start of
2023, the
study found. These threats include FBI raids, investigations, indictments,
and even jail time.
He has also threatened or suggested that the FBI and DOJ
should take action against Senators, Judges, members of the Biden family, and
even non-governmental organizations (e.g., national media, et al).
Robert Maguire, VP for research and data at CREW said: “Trump is promising to go after what he
perceives to be his political enemies. He is promising to essentially weaponize
the government against anyone he sees as not sufficiently loyal, or who is
openly opposed to him. He has constantly seeded this idea that the numerous
charges against him are trumped-up charges and it seems almost to have given
him license to openly say: You’ve done
this to me, so I’m going to do it to you.”
Maguire also said: “His
comments are often reported on or discussed as one-offs like: Trump said this
today, and people talk about it and then it fades away because Trump said
something else the next day, or the next week, or the next month. We figured it
would be helpful to quantify these comments that he’s making to show this isn’t
just a whim or a passing idea that he put out in the world because he saw
somebody say something on TV. It’s a fixation of his, it’s a promise he’s
making to use the government in ways that are squarely unethical.”
CREW duly analyzed more than 13,000 of Trump’s Truth Social
posts from 1 January 2023 to 1 April 2024 and found that, while Trump has
recently dialed down some of his more violent rhetoric, he remains fixated on
threatening political opponents.
Its report, the first in a series, says his attitude can be
summed up in one Truth Social post from August 2023: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
Indeed, last December Trump posted a word cloud based on his
speeches: that word was “revenge.”
Many of his threats to Biden reflect Trump’s now familiar
tactic of reversing charges against his opponents, conjuring a mirror world in
which he claims they are guilty of the very offence of which he is accused.
In one post about the
special counsel Jack Smith, he warned that there will be “repercussions
far greater than anything that Biden or his Thugs could understand
and, if the investigations continue, it will open a “Pandora’s Box” of
retribution.”
In another post, Trump
wrote that his federal indictments are “Setting
a BAD precedent for yourself, Joe. The same can happen to you.”
In July last year Trump
reposted rally coverage quoting him that “Now
the gloves are off.”
Trump has explicitly threatened Biden with a special counsel
investigation and indictment.
In one post he called on AG Merrick Garland, to “immediately
end Special Counsel investigation into anything related to me because I did
everything right, and
appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Joe Biden who hates Biden as
much as Jack Smith hates me.”
Trump has “re-Truthed” others’ posts about Biden that are
even more ominous.
In June 2023, he reposted a clip from Rep. Marjorie Taylor
Greene (R-GA) asserting: “Joe Biden shouldn’t just be impeached, he should
be handcuffed
and hauled out of the White House for his crimes.”
Trump also posted a screenshot of a different post saying
the FBI should: “Raid
all of Biden’s residences and seize anything they want, including his
passports.”
Some posts announced plans for retribution against the
specific lawyers, judges, and other officials whom Trump blames for his legal
troubles. For example, two months before he was found guilty of 34 counts of
falsifying business records, he reposted a call for the Manhattan DA, Alvin
Bragg, to be “put in
jail.”
He also has reposted calls for S/C Jack Smith and others to
be locked up and to “throw
away the key.”
One re-Truth promised to charge the Fulton County GA DA Fani
Willis, along with Bragg, Smith, AG Garland, and Biden, with conspiracy
and racketeering.
Trump has also made
threats to non-profit organizations because of their work examples:
Last November he posted on
Truth Social: “For any radical left
charity, non-profit, or so called aid organizations supporting these caravans
and illegal aliens, we will prosecute them for their participation in human
trafficking, child smuggling, and every other crime we can find.”
CREW argues that the
posts should not be taken as empty threats but as a wake-up call for Congress
to erect meaningful guardrails against the weaponization of law enforcement
agencies before it is too late.
Crew has called on
Congress to pass the Protecting Our Democracy Act (PODA), which would curb abuses of power by
presidents of any party, and to strengthen Congress’ ability to fulfil its
constitutional role as a check on executive branch overreach. That bill
legislation passed the House of Representatives in 2021 on a bipartisan basis
but has languished in the Senate ever since.
Robert Maguire, VP for
research and data at Crew concluded in his report saying: “It is critical in making sure that law
enforcement and the DOJ – all of the things that that entails, both the federal
prosecutors and the FBI – cannot be manipulated by the president to go after
political enemies. That would go a long
way to hamstringing any effort by any president, to be clear, to use those
law enforcement powers to go against political enemies.”
My 2 Cents: I think the
above article speaks volumes about the kind of person Trump truly and it
underscores my belief that he must never be elected again.
The outpouring of support for Kamala Harris as well from many respected Republicans also speaks volumes about the danger that Trump
poses based on his own words as to the action he would take if he were to win
in November – which I believe he will not. Stay tuned.
Thanks for stopping by.