Who would be the most important person in a second Trump administration other than the president? Given the global disorder, you might think the answer would be the secretary of state. Or, given Trump’s age, he would be the oldest person to be sworn in as president—perhaps it would be his vice president, J.D. Vance.
That’s not how Vance sees it. He recently said that “the most important person in government in a Trump-Vance administration other than the president is not [the vice president]; it would be the attorney general.” Asked why, Vance explained: “You need people to believe that if the attorney general prosecutes somebody, it’s motivated by justice and law, and not by politics.”
Vance is right about the qualities of a good attorney general. If only his running mate saw it the same way. Because just as Democrats have weaponized the law against Trump, Trump is threatening that should he win, he will weaponize the law against his political opponents. These threats from Trump attack the core of what makes this country special. Losing an election should never mean the threat of vengeful prosecution, nor should it mean being chased by lawyers for years. And it’s dark that this has become the norm. America needs a return to blind justice.
To give a sense of what the current presidential front-runner Donald Trump has said on the matter, a few examples:
Trump has promised to appoint a “real” special prosecutor to “go after” Joe Biden and, in an April interview with Time magazine, did not rule out firing attorneys who refuse to prosecute someone. “It would depend on the situation,” he said of this hypothetical.
“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again,” he wrote on social media last month, adding that he was referring to “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters & Corrupt Election Officials.”
Trump has shared posts on his Truth Social account with photos of his political adversaries (including Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Kamala Harris, Anthony Fauci, and Hunter Biden, among others) in orange jumpsuits with text that reads, “How to actually ‘fix the system’ ” as well as other posts calling for the arrest of Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.
In July, he amplified posts on Truth Social that said Liz Cheney was guilty of treason and called for “televised military tribunals” for the former congresswoman who was vice chair of the House Select Committee to investigate January 6. The following month, he shared a post calling for a military tribunal for Barack Obama.
Last month he called for his presidential rival Kamala Harris to be “impeached, prosecuted, or both” for the “crime of the century” at the southern border.
At a rally in Coachella this month, he trained his sights on Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic nominee for the Senate in California who fanned the flames of the “Trump-Russia Collusion” narrative when he was the chairman and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. “The worst people are the enemies from within,” Trump told the crowd. “The sleazebags like the guy that you’re going to elect to the Senate, Shifty Adam Schiff. He’s a sleazebag.”
Asked about his “enemy within” comments in a Fox News town hall, he stuck to his guns, this time referring to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “The Pelosis, these people, they’re so sick and they’re so evil.” Asked again about the comments by Fox News host Howie Kurtz a few days later, he doubled down, referring to Schiff as a “crooked politician” and an “enemy” and to Nancy Pelosi as an “enemy from within.”
What began as a rally chant in 2016—“lock her up”—has, over the past eight years, morphed into a broader threat of judiciary revenge. It’s no wonder that many people believe that if Trump wins in November, his second term will be a revenge tour.
Mention that fear to Trump supporters and you will likely get the refrain about taking him seriously but not literally, or be pointed in the direction of Trump’s first term as evidence there is nothing to worry about. The argument is best summarized by the Republican lawyer Mike Davis, who recently told Politico: “He ran on ‘I’m gonna lock her up’ with Hillary, and didn’t do shit.”
But the tale of the Justice Department under Trump is hardly a story of an even-tempered president dutifully respecting the sanctity of the rule of law. In 2017, Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation into his campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. And in 2020, Bill Barr resigned from the role after he refused to entertain Trump’s stolen election nonsense. Trump’s response was to attack him as “Dumb, Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy, A RINO WHO COULDN’T DO THE JOB.”
This time around, Trump wants a loyal attorney general, people familiar with his thinking recently told The Wall Street Journal. I doubt that’s because only a loyalist can be trusted to draw a bright line between politics and the law.
Trump should know better, given his firsthand experience since leaving office of facing transparently political lawsuits. There was the meritless prosecution by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, not to mention the various investigations he faced while in office, including a politicized FBI investigation into his alleged collusion with Russia that hung over the first two years of his presidency. But Democrats at least know not to say the quiet part out loud. When Harris supporters chant “lock him up” at her rallies, the vice president pushes back.
Even Joe Biden realized he’d slipped up Tuesday when he said “We’ve got to lock him up.” He quickly corrected himself: “Politically lock him up.”
Maybe all Trump’s threats are just another example of his penchant for exaggeration and bombast.
Bill Barr, who, we will remind you, Trump has called “Dumb, Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy, a RINO WHO COULDN’T DO THE JOB,” told The Free Press he’s not too worried about these threats. “While I’ve been critical of Trump and wanted someone else to get the nomination, I will vote for him because I think he will generally pursue much sounder policies than Harris, and because I believe the real threat to democracy comes from the progressive left,” he said. “Based on my experience with Trump, I think the idea that he is a fascist and the second coming of Hitler is preposterous. Nor am I worried about him using the DOJ against his political enemies. I learned not to take his bombast literally. And even if he wanted to, there are sufficient checks and balances to detect and prevent it.”
But surely we deserve better than “Don’t worry, he doesn’t mean it.” I take the old-fashioned view that words matter. Especially those of a former and would-be future president. You don’t need to think Trump is poised to become a fascist dictator to see these threats as part of the dangerous degradation of our politics.
There’s no shortage of apocalyptic warnings about either a Trump or Harris presidency. They are almost always overblown. The really alarming thing, though, is the cycle of norm violations, which my colleague Eli Lake spelled out recently.
Both Trump and his opponents are trapped in such a cycle. Both parties justify their rule-breaking as a response to the other side’s escalations. The surest way to end our great experiment in self-governance is to treat politics as all-out war, and our political opponents like an enemy within.
Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Follow him on X @ollywiseman.
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