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Last year, as his legal crises intensified, Donald Trump grew explicit about his intentions to retaliate against his perceived foes with politically motivated criminal cases. In September 2023, for example, the former president suggested he’d have “no choice” but to prosecute his political opponents in a possible second term.
The Republican added soon after that when prosecutors took steps to hold him accountable for his crimes, “what they’ve done is they’ve released the genie out of the box.” (I assume he meant “bottle.”) This came on the heels of Trump vowing to appoint a “real” special prosecutor to go after President Joe Biden and his family.
As NBC News noted overnight, months later, he’s still at it.
Fresh off last week’s historic guilty verdict, former President Donald Trump had a warning for his political opponents on Tuesday. In an interview with the conservative outlet Newsmax, Trump seemed to float the possibility of imprisoning his political opponents if he becomes president again.
In apparent reference to Democrats, the presumptive GOP nominee said during his on-air appearance, “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.”
Why does this incessant rhetoric matter? Several reasons, actually.
1. Trump is promising to abuse the system. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is talking about deliberately trying to prosecute his perceived political foes, not because there’s evidence of them doing anything wrong, but because he was held accountable for his own crimes and feels the need to retaliate. Trump is, in other words, effectively promising voters that he’ll commit impeachable offenses.
2. Trump already tried do in the recent past what he’s promising to do in the near future. While in office, the Republican went to great lengths to weaponize federal law enforcement in the hope of seeing his opponents prosecuted without cause. Those efforts fell short, but Trump intends to learn from the failures and have greater success in a second term.
3. Republicans are on board. If there was a point when GOP officials were uncomfortable with the idea of Trump deliberately abusing the powers of the presidency and the levers of power to retaliate against his domestic enemies, that point has since passed: Too many Republican policymakers are now enthusiastic proponents of retaliatory prosecutions based on conspiracy theories that don’t make any sense.
4. The logic is stark raving mad. To hear Trump tell it, fair is fair: Since he was prosecuted by critics, it stands to reason that he can return the favor if he’s returned to power. But that’s not how any of this works. If a police officer arrested a thief caught in the act of stealing a car, it does not mean that the thief would be justified in trying later to arrest the police officer. The suspected criminal could not credibly go to court and argue, “Well, the cop released the genie out of the box.”
5. Trump is proving Biden right. Biden and his re-election campaign are eager to make the case that Trump is an authoritarian who intends to undermine our justice system and abandon the rule of law. The more the Republican talks about prosecuting his foes without cause, the more he proves Biden right.