The Donald Trump ‘Revenge Tour’ is underway
On April 23, 1992, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band Kiss started its Revenge Tour in San Francisco.
On Jan. 20, 2025, the Gaming Hall of Fame member Donald J. Trump started his own Revenge Tour in Washington, D.C.
It's dangerous spelunking into the caverns of Trump's mind, but it's clear to me that the motivating factor of his presidency is revenge. And Trump hasn't kept it a secret. On the campaign trail, he repeatedly declared to MAGA crowds, "I am your retribution."
Trump aide Omarosa Manigault warned back in 2016: "Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump. It's everyone who's ever doubted Donald, whoever disagreed, whoever challenged him -- it is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe."
So, what are a few examples of pieces Trump has played on his revenge tour?
He removed security protection from his first-term national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who'd both taken actions Trump disliked after leaving their posts. That's despite threats against their lives by Iran. Apparently, any risk to their lives is trumped by a Trumpian thirst for vengeance.
Trump has bullied the media for supposed past offenses, too. He didn't think news platforms such as The Washington Post and Facebook had treated him fairly. Since Trump's reelection, the Post's owner, Jeff Bezos, has constricted what the paper's opinion pages say, and Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, stopped Facebook from fact-checking posts. When The Associated Press refused to change the 500-year-old name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, Trump had their reporters banned from the White House newsroom. He considers PBS and NPR hotbeds of liberalism that failed to present "a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events" and is trying to end every single dollar of federal funding for them.
State and federal lawyers who worked on cases where Trump was the defendant are especially high priority targets for the current president. He personally ordered the firing of more than a dozen Department of Justice lawyers who worked on special prosecutor Jack Smith's criminal prosecution of him. Pam Bondi, Trump's attorney general, has opened a criminal investigation of New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office won a judgment against him for fraud. The judgment is now worth more than half a billion dollars. On March 14, Trump issued an order barring lawyers of the New York law firm Paul Weiss from federal office buildings and suspending their security clearances. The firm's primary offense in Trump's eyes was its past employment of former FBI Director and special counsel Robert Mueller and of one-time Special Assistant District Attorney Mark Pomerantz, both of whom led investigations into Trump.
For Trump, resentment is an unquenchable flame.
In his first term, Trump was impeached for pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to announce a criminal investigation into rival Joe Biden and his son. Trump blames Zelenskyy for not yielding to his threats and, since returning to office, cut off aid to Ukraine once. He has broached leaving Ukraine to the tender mercies of Vladimir Putin and his North Korean mercenaries.
After Trump lost reelection in 2020, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the winner, Joe Biden, to congratulate him on his victory. Trump has neither forgotten nor forgiven that routine act of diplomacy. Trump bypassed Netanyahu in negotiating the release of Israeli American hostage Edan Alexander, who was being held by the terrorist group Hamas. Trump's team also left Netanyahu out of a deal with the Houthis in Yemen that protected American ships from bombardment but not Israeli territory. Trump is making Netanyahu look like no more than a yapping poodle in the eyes of Israeli voters. It doesn't matter to Trump that an Israel less certain of American support may also be impelled to take riskier actions.
Civil lawsuits are a favored weapon in Trump's arsenal. In one example among many, after winning the 2024 election, he sued respected pollster J. Ann Seltzer and the Des Moines Register for "brazen electoral interference." Why would he undertake such litigation with almost no chance of winning in court? His explanation for suing a business reporter in 2006 applies to the Seltzer case as well: "I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I'm happy about."
Nothing motivates Trump more than wreaking revenge on those who crossed him, underestimated him, belittled him or told unpleasant truths about him.
Great historical figures are often remembered for a few words that capture what motivated them. For Martin Luther King, they were that "he had a dream" of a country where "all men are created equal." For Lincoln, they were "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." For Patrick Henry, they were "give me liberty or give me death."
The words that encapsulate Trump's motivation were captured on camera after he beat his opponents in the 2024 New Hampshire primary: "I don't get angry, I get even."
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