GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump has threatened anyone who opposes his candidacy with future retribution, from his direct opponents like Kamala Harris (“she should really be in jail”) to any donor helping to elect Harris to any business, politician, or citizen that worked against his election to a second term.
If he wins, Trump has said, he will use the power of the presidency, his new immunity, and even the U.S. military to take revenge on what he characterizes as the “enemy within” — anti-MAGA figures who Trump says are more dangerous than foreign adversaries like Russia and China.
As he runs his campaign, Trump remains the target of multiple criminal indictments, including cases against him by the Department of Justice for such serious crimes as election interference and obstructing the peaceful transfer of power.
Not surprisingly, Special Counsel Jack Smith — who brought these charges against Trump — has his own special category among those on Trump’s enemies list.
In a hoarse voice on a radio call-in segment, Trump said that along with the “criminals” and millions of migrants he promises to deport, “Jack Smith should be considered mentally deranged and he should be thrown out of the country.”
Trump says he wants total unchecked power to deport Jack Smith for investigating him: “Jack Smith should be considered mentally deranged and he should be thrown out of the country” pic.twitter.com/BjXURwi0sr
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 25, 2024
Threats issued by political autocrats are often enough to modify behavior, even before a threat is carried out. Super-billionaire Elon Musk, who has gone all in to support Trump after saying just two years ago that Trump should cede the field, understands this and is frank about it.
Musk recently told Tucker Carlson that if Trump loses, he is “screwed.” Axiomatically, as Musk clearly sees and Trump clearly states, if Trump wins, those who haven’t, like Musk, praised and supported him are screwed.
[NOTE: Musk’s companies derive about $300 billion in revenue from the U.S. government, and that could increase by orders of magnitude if he is put in charge of efficiency in government, a position Trump has said he would give him.]
The pattern of curbing any objections that could trigger retribution from Trump is nowhere more evident this week than in the refusal of the Washington Post to endorse either presidential candidate — despite ample Post reporting that suggests Trump is unfit and untethered by the Constitution.
The Post, of course, is owned by Amazon founder and super-billionaire Jeff Bezos, who has suffered Trump’s wrath enough to hope that pulling back on an endorsement may be enough to save him lots of future headaches. At a 2016 rally, Trump threatened Bezos (Trump: “Jeff Bozo”) and Amazon, saying: “If I become president, oh do they have problems. They’re going to have such problems.”
And he meant it, threatening Bezos with an anti-trust breakup, working against awarding Amazon a multi-billion-dollar Department of Defense cloud computing contract, and trying to get the U.S. Postal Service to raise Amazon’s shipping rates.
Those were Trump’s tactics when the so-called “guardrails” were on in his first administration — guardrails most observers say won’t be there in a Trump 2.0 if he wins.
Bezos may have saved himself some money and some headaches, but capitulation to imminent retribution historically doesn’t lead to salvation — only to more capitulation. (See: history of Eastern Europe.)
It’s not hard to imagine a threat to kick Bezos out of the country too. If Elon Musk, the world’s richest man is worried, who is Bezos to be cavalier about his endorsement?
Is Fake News Washington Post being used as a lobbyist weapon against Congress to keep Politicians from looking into Amazon no-tax monopoly?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017