Dem
47
GOP
53
In the last couple of days, Donald Trump loyalists have been all over the place insisting that Donald Trump does not care about revenge and score-settling. For example, RNC Co-Chair and soon-to-be First-Daughter-in-Law Lara Trump was on Fox, and declared: "He does not plan on retribution. He plans on restoring trust and faith of the American people into so many of these foundational elements of our country." And Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) appeared on Fox Business, and said: "Donald Trump has never been about retribution."
We suppose that the viewers of those networks, who are primed to accept propaganda and gaslighting uncritically, might accept these statements as truth. But beyond them... c'mon. Of course Trump is interested in retribution and score-settling. It's one of his favorite things. Heck, it's one of his obsessions. It is true that he's something of a paper tiger, and tends to settle scores with words and insults rather than actions. It is also true that when he does move beyond words, the victims of his score-settling are usually Trump underlings and insiders, since he has more power over them by virtue of his ability to fire them/excommunicate them from MAGA World. But to say he isn't interested in retribution simply flies in the face of reality. And in his second term, of course, Trump could be considerably less restrained, by virtue of the Supreme Court's Louis XIV ruling.
We have absolutely no doubt that the messaging coming from these folks is centrally coordinated and is approved at the highest levels of the Republican Party. What is less clear to us is why they are putting this out there. Not only is Trump not hurt with his voters by his penchant for retribution, it's one of his biggest selling points. They love it that he "owns the libs" and others who are not sufficiently MAGA loyal.
The only thing we can come up with, and we don't particularly love this thesis, is that the Trump insiders know full well that Joe Biden is considering blanket pardons for everyone on Trump's enemies list, and they are trying to convince the public that is not needed, so as to put pressure on the White House not to do it. This really doesn't make much sense, since Biden is clearly no longer worried about political pressure, but it's all we've got.
Oh, and as long as we're talking about pardons, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said that Hunter Biden's trial and Donald Trump's New York trial were both politically motivated, and so both defendants deserve a pardon. Putting aside the question of whether a Trump pardon is appropriate, this is a clumsily expressed opinion, at best, since it implies that Joe Biden could do the same thing for Trump that he did for the First Son. Biden cannot do that, of course, since he cannot pardon state-level crimes/convictions. In any case, the real story here is that Fetterman is clearly positioning himself as a 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, and is trying to carve out some version of a Democratic/centrist/Bro lane, where he can get the votes of Democrats AND non-college white men/Joe Rogan types. We'll see if the Senator can pull off that particular magic trick, but we don't like his odds. Fetterman hasn't been in national politics long, so he is apparently unaware of how the Republicans will attack him if he becomes the Democratic nominee. There will be hundreds of millions of dollars of ads paid for by Elon Musk that scream: "HE HAD A MASSIVE STROKE AND IS VERY BADLY BRAIN DAMAGED!!!" Actually, he had a small stroke and has largely recovered, but that will not affect the GOP messaging at all. If he takes part in a debate and makes one tiny little error, the headlines will be all about his stroke and the tiny error. Welcome to the modern GOP campaign strategy. Get used to it. (Z)