What does Trump's "Retribution" look like?
ret·ri·bu·tion, noun, punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act.
Trump’s hazy ideas on “retribution” and how it would actually impact his 2.0 agenda are becoming clearer. In The New York Times, alarming questions are raised regarding the expansion of Presidential powers, should Trump return once again to high office. This is not particularly novel, considering former special counsel John Durham’s activities in the Trump administration. What better signal as to what Trump, after four years in the wilderness, might attempt. Further, we’ve already had intimations of what a Trump 2.0 Presidency might look like by the midterms. In the January 6 insurrection; in going after Biden from the Oval Office; in the possible withdrawal from NATO.
What else? Well, there is the matter of pardons, which Trump heaped upon his allies as he fell from power. As well as questions surrounding whether or not he had a deal with disgraced former Mayor and old friend Rudy Giuliani to make some coin up in this piece upon exiting stage right. There are also Trump’s calls for the defunding of the FBI and Justice Departments, seemingly at odds with the “law and order” orientation of the previous incarnations of the Republican Party.
What about a Trump, 2.0 view of Executive powers look like? Trump is increasingly obsessed with what he calls the “deep state,” hinting that he wants government workers “to pass a new civil service test.” One, of course, of his making. Tori Oten of The Ticker adds:
Trump also wants to be able to impound funds, meaning refuse to spend money appropriated for programs he doesn’t like. The tactic was banned under Richard Nixon, but Trump insists on his campaign website that presidents have a constitutional right to impound funds. He says he will reinstate the practice, even though it could spark a lengthy legal battle.
He also plans to eliminate employment protections for tens of thousands of civil servants, making them easier to replace. He would then purge intelligence agencies, the State Department, and the defense agencies of officials whom he has deemed members of “the sick political class that hates our country.”
Which dovetails neatly into the matter of “retribution.” Steve Bannon reiterated its importance over the weekend, which is significant. In his bitter, aggrieved “retribution” talk, Trump ties it into his hatred of the “deep state” — which he perceives as having it in for him politically as well as legally — to QAnoners and conspiracy-obsessives on the far left as well as the far right. It is a not unfamiliar American phenomenon, conspiracy thinking; in fact its influence in our history moves in cycles. The late historian Richard Hofstadter wrote about this in “The Paranoid Style of American Politics.” “For Hofstadter, the ‘paranoid style’ was a recurring mode of thought that manifested itself in American history in many mass movements, ranging from the anti-Mason and anti-Catholic crusades of the 19th century to the anti-communism of Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society,” observes Jeet Heer. The through-line of this continues into recent spurious movements like the Birthers, the anti-vaxxers and, of course, QAnoners.
It should be noted that RFK, Jr — a proto-left conspiracy guy — is being enthusiastically hailed by Bannon. And that is not paranoid style thinking. It is a fact. “Steve Bannon is apparently a huge RFK Jr. supporter, floating Kennedy as ‘an excellent choice for President Trump to consider’ as a running mate,” writes Molly Jong-Fast in VF. “Roger Stone called a Trump-Kennedy ticket a ‘dream.’” So there’s that.
And Trump’s allies in Congress have hinted by their actions at what we can expect by their utter lack of legislative accomplishment. Instead we have seen “weaponization panels,” quixotic votes to censure and political investigations that have all replaced the normal workings of the House of Representatives. NDAA, for example, approved last week by the House, is DOA in the Democrat-controlled Senate. "The battle to avenge Trump began on the first day of the new Congress, and it has grown nearly six months into the GOP majority, led by Trump’s staunchest allies in the conference and usually getting a helping hand from Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif," Sahil Kapur wrote for NBCNews.
There is also Ukraine, which is much more serious. Much has been made — and rightly so — of the former President’s claim that he would end the largest conflict in Europe since World War II in 24-hours. “It would be easy,” he said in May. But very few particulars have been involved about that strategy. Trump, in typical “Art of the Deal” negotiator mode — as if diplomacy were a real estate marketing deal — broke his deliberately vague geopolitical strategy down to a few sentences for Maria Bartiromo. “I would tell Zelensky: No more,” he said. “You got to make a deal. I would tell Putin: If you don’t make a deal, we’re going to give them a lot. We’re going to give them more than they ever got, if we have to.” Ok, then.
If only it were that “easy.” Trump’s bewildering Russophilia — Ok, perhaps for a Tolstoi scholar; not so OK for a US President — suggests that such a deal, if put forth, would probably lean more towards Putin than Zelenskii. And that would mean, in fine, a significant and swift diminution of aid to the Ukraine, which has not such a fantastical hold on Trump’s imagination as does Putin’s Russia. “Ukraine should probably be worried that if Trump returns to power he would relish obliterating Biden’s legacy, in the same way that he pulled out of the Paris climate accord and trashed the Iran nuclear deal – diplomatic centerpieces of the Obama administration,” CNN analyst Stephen Collinson reminds us. “And the ex-president may harbor particular resentment toward Zelensky after his attempt to get the Ukrainian president to announce a corruption investigation against Biden ahead of the 2020 election led to his first impeachment.”
One final note — elites dismiss the “deep state” talk at their own peril. There is a reason why anti-“deep state” populism has lasted so long (unfortunately) and has transcended the barriers that exist between the left and the right. I have been reading Fiona Hill’s memoir, aptly titled “There is Nothing for You Here,” which is excellent. Hill, who has been lambasted by Trump as being an icon of the “deep state” is, among other things, a very sophisticated political player. This review of her book, by Katelyn Fossett grasps how Hill has turned the “deep state” sobriquet against her opponents:
Hill uses the story of her hometown and her journey to the White House to show not just that success was difficult for her, but that it should have been impossible. The more she describes her native mining town, the more it looks like deindustrialized centers in the American Midwest and coal towns in Appalachia. That’s the point: Hill is particularly interested in how a lack of opportunity, not just in the UK but also in the U.S. and Russia, creates the ideal circumstances for a dangerous brand of populist politics to thrive.
Meaning: Hill used her own biography, which is far from elite, in her own defense against charges of being of the “deep state.” There are thousands of decent Justice, FBI and State employees that were not “to the manner born.” They are not making high-six figure salaries; they work hard for their country and do not have silver spoons in their mouths. But making that argument, Hill’s argument — as opposed to just dismissing the conspiracy types altogether — is one that gains traction. The Trump-Bannon-Roger Stone trap involves Democrats casually dismissing the perception of elites as career government officers while Trump promises — in JD Vance’s Ohio and Ron Jonson’s Wisconsin — to hire regular Americans to fill those same positions. Imagine, for example, if Trump were to nominate, say, Arizona’s “Teacher of the Year” as Ambassador to Canada?
Democrats dismiss the possibility of this being a winning populist issue at their own peril.
What just happened at the BBC? (Jon Allsop/CJR)
How Harlan Crow Slashed his Tax Bill by Taking Clarence Thomas on Superyacht Cruises (Paul Kiel/ProPublica)
"A Swamp Critter Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton" (Nina Burleigh/American Political Freakshow)
“The people, who are inside both publishers’ inner circles and asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, said the owners have held talks about a deal where The Times is folded into Penske’s PMC Media empire that includes Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, and Variety.” (Intersect news)
“The strike of SAG-AFTRA highlights a summer of workers’ pushback against a finance-driven economy.” (Harold Myerson/TAP)
“Jamaica had been taken by the British in 1655 and only became independent in 1962. For all migrants, Britain was ‘the mother country’. Stuart came as a Rhodes scholar, a young anti-colonial, to Oxford. Like most of the Windrush generation he stayed, learning new political identities – first West Indian, then Black – over troubled decades. I learned what it meant to live in a mixed couple, something that carried one set of meanings in Kingston, another in Birmingham.” (Catherine Hall/LRB)