Former President Donald Trump has continued to make retribution against political allies a central part of his campaign for his third presidential term, saying in a recent interview that revenge is sometimes “justified.” President Joe Biden’s campaign played up the comments on Friday, pointing out Trump’s focus on personal and political retaliation.
“Donald Trump is back. [the] “He is now a convicted felon, but remains insane and obsessed with revenge,” Biden campaign spokesman Amar Moosa said in a statement to ABC News.
In a statement, Moussa said Trump was “a vile, little man who only cares about himself, his billionaire donors and his own vendetta.”
In an interview with television host Dr. Phil McGraw, Trump was asked about his calls for retaliation and his claims that he has taken action against some of his political opponents. Trump initially said he would work on forgiving and forgetting, but quickly changed his tune after McGraw mentioned the Pope and said forgiveness is necessary to avoid revenge.
“Revenge does take time, I’ll say it, but sometimes revenge is justified,” Trump said in the interview that aired Thursday night.
“‘Revenge’ is a very strong word – revenge for success, maybe – but that’s what I want to see. I want to see this country survive, because this country cannot survive like this.”
Trump’s calls for retaliation began the month he was indicted and was first mentioned in March while rallying his most ardent supporters at CPAC.
“In 2016 I declared, ‘I am your voice.’ Today I add, ‘I am your warrior. I am your justice. I am the avenger of the wronged and the betrayed,” Trump said at the political conference.
Now, after Trump was convicted on 34 counts in a Manhattan hush-money trial, his campaign is facing growing calls for retaliation.
“We’re going to show them we’re going to fight,” Trump said in a speech from Trump Tower the day after the conviction.
Trump has since signaled he believes Democrats have gone after him and that he could be investigated and even jailed.
“This is so terrible. It’s such a terrible precedent for our country,” Trump said in an interview with Newsmax earlier this week. “Are you saying the next president is going to do the same to them? That’s really the question.”
“The path they’re leading us down is truly frightening, and the same thing could very well happen to them.”
And in an interview with Phoenix-based ABC station KNXV on Thursday, Trump repeatedly refused to rule out the possibility of indicting Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has brought the hush money case to court. It’s unclear what form Trump would take in ordering such an indictment.
Asked whether he would prosecute Bragg, Trump said “Alvin Bragg did something very bad,” and repeated his claims that the district attorney was backed by Democrats and that the judge in the case had “a huge conflict of interest.”
Asked again whether he would indict Bragg, Trump said he was “not going to say anything one way or the other,” adding: “We’re going to wait and see what happens.”
When the interviewer pointed out that Trump did not jail any political opponents during his first term and asked if the conviction had changed his stance, Trump responded by saying he thought it was “horrible” to arrest and jail the wife of a former US president, referring to his rival in the 2016 general election, Hillary Clinton. He added: “The world has changed now. They’re doing things that haven’t been done before.”
After receiving criticism, Trump changed his rhetoric, countering that he had argued retaliation would be a form of “success” rather than revenge, saying: “My revenge will be success.”
But his beliefs have only motivated him and his supporters to use rhetoric that could lead to violence more frequently.
In an interview with Fox News over the weekend, Trump’s first face-to-face interview since his conviction, avoided saying whether he would seek revenge in a second term, saying he wanted to unite the country while repeatedly describing his political opponents as “bad” and “evil” people.
Asked about his past comments about revenge, Trump said, “In some ways, that’s a really difficult question, because these are bad people, they’re sick people, they’re very destructive people.”
“My revenge will be successful,” he added, saying he would unite the country, but again slammed the “evil people” who were pursuing him.
Trump’s retaliatory rhetoric isn’t just about his own legal battles: He has also attacked groups that have attacked his political allies, most recently the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
A judge ruled this week that Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Trump, must report to prison by next month, after the former president sought indictments of the January 6th committee and defended Bannon against unfounded claims that the committee erased and destroyed evidence.
“The un-American weaponization of our law enforcement agencies has reached a level of illegality never before thought possible,” Trump said in a post on the social media network. “Indict the unscreened J6 Committee for illegally deleting and destroying all ‘investigation findings’!”
Democrats have used Trump’s words against him, at times trying to get him to back down from his violent rhetoric, but he has instead doubled down on his attacks.
McGraw argued that Trump “won’t have time for revenge” if he wins a second term, and he also presented Trump with a “what if” scenario, allowing the former president to steer the conversation in a more positive direction.
“What if, when we win this election, we say, ‘Enough is enough. We’ve gone too far. This is a race to the bottom and it stops here. It stops now?'” McGraw asked.
“That’s fine,” Trump said, but then made allegations about people “spying” on his campaign, referring to the FBI’s intercepts of communications from members of his own campaign who were in contact with Russian operatives during the 2016 election.
“What they’re doing is bad,” Trump said.
