Grace in victory, ya' kiddin' me?
For Donald J. Trump, there is no high road
Nearly five years ago, web publisher Elizabeth Spiers wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post headlined “Trump is the ultimate sore winner. Now he’ll seek revenge.” This was after then-President Donald J. Trump was acquitted by the GOP-dominated Senate in his first impeachment.
Might he have been gracious in victory? Might he have extended an olive branch to critics? Might he have even shown a touch of shame, contrition and regret?
Fuggadabout it.
Within 48 hours, Trump fired two witnesses who testified in the case, ordering hotel-chain founder Gordon D. Sondland recalled from his post as the ambassador to the European Union and having Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, a decorated Iraq war veteran on the National Security Council staff, marched out of the White House by security guards. He also ousted Vindman’s brother, Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, from the NSC staff.
Trump’s press secretary declared that those who hurt the president “should pay for” it.
So, is it any surprise that president-elect Trump hasn’t even waited until he assumes office to rain hell on his real and perceived critics? Is it any wonder that he has sued Gannett, The Des Moines Register and a pollster over simply reporting a pre-election Iowa poll that showed him as slightly behind Kamala Harris in the state?
In his mind, the pollster was guilty of “brazen election interference,” according to the suit. Reporting the news, to Trump, is interfering with an election, it seems.
This followed an October suit against CBS News in federal court in Texas, in which Trump alleged that “60 Minutes” engaged in deceptive trade practices — an odd charge — when it aired an interview with Kamala Harris. He objected to editing that he claimed made Harris look better.
“It’s clear that Trump is waging war on the press,” Samantha Barbas, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law told The New York Times. “Trump and his lawyers are going to use any legal claim that they think has a chance of sticking. They’ll cast a wide net to carry out this vendetta.”
So don’t expect graciousness in victory from the once and future president. Vindictiveness and intimidation are his longstanding tropes.
“If somebody attacks him, he attacks them back, he says, ten times as hard,” New York Times reporter Peter Baker said. “He’s not about diplomacy. He’s not about negotiation. He is all about the fight.”
Whether slights are big or small, imagined or real, Trump uses whatever levers of power he has to slash anyone who crosses him or might do so. He appears to take to heart a couple of Niccolò Machiavelli’s pieces of advice: "It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both” and “If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.”
How petty can the once and future president be?
He once built a hill in front of a cottage in Scotland whose owner had opposed a Trump golf course and hotel development — so the cottage’s yard flooded whenever it rained.
Beyond just owning a thin skin, Trump has a method to his viciousness. Hitting back hard is pure Trump; it’s something he learned from one of his first lawyers, the late disbarred Joe McCarthy errand boy Roy Cohn. As a cousin of the notorious lawyer said, “Roy Cohn showed him that you can turn around a situation just by ignoring the facts and going after your attacker.”
Trump does that either with legal action or verbal savagery, a powerful weapon when wielded by someone in the White House.
Rex Tillerson, his former secretary of state, was “dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell.” Adviser Steve Bannon “cried when he got fired and begged for his job.” Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci was a “highly unstable ‘nut job.’ ” Former assistant Omarosa Manigault was “wacky” and “deranged,” “a lowlife.” Former national security adviser John Bolton was “very publicly terminated.”
Making people pay has long been a key to Trump’s approach. Spiers noted that as a casino operator, he invented fake ethical scandals about people who could have exposed him as a terrible businessman. Recall that he drove his casinos into bankruptcy six times (really, what amount of stupidity or, more likely, greed does it take to bankrupt a gaming house?)
He’s especially nasty toward the media, apparently hoping he can cow critical journalists.
The $16 million settlement he won from ABC parent Disney seems to have invigorated him. In his recent press conference, he referred to ongoing lawsuits he has brought against publisher Simon & Schuster over the rights to recorded interviews he gave to journalist Bob Woodward, and the Pulitzer Prize board for reaffirming awards it gave to The New York Times and Washington Post for their reporting on ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia.
“It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press,” Trump said. “Our press is very corrupt. Almost as corrupt as our elections.”
While Disney’s surrender has riled many in the media, what’s more troubling is that it may have been a product of fears that a Trumpian judiciary in Florida and beyond, as well as a Trump-friendly jury in the red state, would have backed the former president up.
A federal judge in the state in July denied Disney’s motion to dismiss Trump’s suit. As The New York Times reported: “A reasonable jury could interpret Stephanopoulos’s statements as defamatory,” Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote, and then added an emphasis in italics. “Stephanopoulos stated ten times that a jury — or juries — had found plaintiff liable for rape.”
Beyond Trump’s concerns, his war on the media could have far-reaching effects for others who share his feelings of victimization. Lee Levine, a retired media lawyer, told The Wall Street Journal that the Disney settlement will embolden some media critics. That could potentially chill news outlets’ handling of sensitive stories, the paper reported. It “will definitely have an impact on news coverage going forward,” Levine said.
“You need a fair press,” Trump also said, striking an heroic pose. “I’m doing this not because I want to. I’m doing this because I feel I have an obligation to.”
Gimme a break. Trump’s litigiousness should be a lesson to anyone in media who believes that capitulating to him will spare them his ire (take note, owners of The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times).
He will use whatever powers are available to him to muzzle or punish critics in journalism and elsewhere. His choice to head the FBI, Kash Patel, said months before the election that he would use his post “to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”
And Trump has made it clear he will use his Justice Department to exact vengeance on political opponents, such as former Rep. Liz Cheney, whom House Republicans want investigated criminally for her role in leading the panel that probed the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. A House subcommittee, echoing Trump’s attacks, recommended the investigation in a recently issued report that suggested she tampered with a witness.
“Liz Cheney could be in a lot of trouble based on the evidence obtained by the subcommittee, which states that ‘numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, and these violations should be investigated by the FBI,’” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social network.
Trump’s enemies list is a long one. That’s why some, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, have urged President Biden to issue preemptive pardons to, among others, the entire Jan. 6 House investigative panel.
“You know, when Trump talks about sending to jail people who were on that Jan. 6 committee, that sounds like being a tin-pot dictator,” Sanders said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “This is what authoritarianism is all about. It’s what dictatorship is all about…. You do not arrest elected officials who disagree with you.”
Would-be appointee Patel seems to think arrests and worse are appropriate and not only for elected officials, but just rank and file government staffers. In a 2023 book, Patel listed 60 people whom he classified as “members of the executive branch deep state” — a “cabal of unelected tyrants” who posed “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.”
And he has since said that the Trump administration must deal with this “deep state,” be it “criminally or civilly.”
At least one potential target on Patel’s list, former Justice Department public affairs office director Sarah Isgur, argues she would prefer a prosecution to a pardon that would be seen as an affirmation of guilt.
“If we broke the law, we should be charged and convicted,” Isgur wrote in a New York Times opinion piece headlined “I Don’t Want a Pardon from Biden. None of Us Should.” “If we didn’t break the law, we should be willing to show that we trust the fairness of the justice system that so many of us have defended. And we shouldn’t give permission to future presidents to pardon political allies who may commit real crimes on their behalf.”
Certainly, Isgur is taking a high-minded approach. She notes, however, that such prosecutions would likely be unpopular with many Americans, including those who voted for Trump.
“If he wants to prosecute everyone on his list, it’s going to require a lot of law enforcement resources,” she writes. “At a time when much of the American public wants the president to focus on inflation, crime and immigration, voters may not be pleased if drug cartels are a lower priority than prosecuting Liz Cheney for treason.”
Of course, for Trump and his toadies, using taxpayer money and resources to browbeat enemies would likely be cost-free. He wouldn’t be paying the bill — we all would — and he would force his targets – whether well-heeled or not – to spend a lot in their defenses.
As The New York Times reported, Trump famously lost a libel case that he brought against the writer Timothy O’Brien for allegedly understating Trump’s net worth. During the 2016 election, Trump told The Washington Post that it was worth it, even with the loss.
“I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more,” he said of O’Brien and his book publisher. “I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about.”
If that’s the sort of thing that makes Trump happy, buckle up. If you’ve watched him over time — or, heck, just visited one of his gaudy hotels — you know that grace is not part of his repertoire.