Trump's In His Terrible Two’s

For our president everything's personal

On the surface, the Trump administration seems to be all chaos, all the time. But look more closely and you’ll see one factor stitches much of the disorder together: It’s personal.

Whether he’s penalizing supposed enemies or harassing pesky Democrats, Donald Trump’s moves have to do with flexing personal power, exacting revenge, or a combination of both. And in one major exception that proves the rule, he used his power to favor more than 1,500 specific people.

Let’s look at Trump’s attacks on big law firms. His targets are those that have employed lawyers who worked on federal investigations of his 2016 campaign or represented individuals who took legal action against him or his administration. In executive orders, he has threatened to cancel their federal contracts and bar their employees from federal buildings. These would be crippling sanctions.

As it turns out, the attacks on the big law firms have constituted a shakedown scheme. One by one, the intimidated firms negotiate with the White House, promising to make up for their “sins” by performing free legal work for Trump’s causes. The total value of their pledges is nearly $1 billion. This is tribute being paid to an emperor.

While Trump went after lawyers he resents, he also ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the former election cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs and former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor. Taylor was outed as the author of “anonymous” criticism of Trump during his first term. Krebs, formerly a federal cybersecurity official, had declared that the 2020 election had been fair and square. Trump, who insisted he was robbed of a victory, never got over this. As he ordered Bondi to investigate, Trump also revoked Taylor’s and Krebs’s security clearances.

Speaking of revoking security clearances, Trump has ordered that a bunch of his former political opponents, who once held high offices, lose theirs. (By tradition, former high-ranking officials retain their clearances as a matter of courtesy.) Among those who lost their clearances are Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, both of whom challenged him in election campaigns, and three former top officials in the Biden administration. Oh ya, and you’re truly, twice, despite being retired from both the military and congress and thus no longer having a clearance!

Meanwhile, over at the Department of Justice, Trump’s FBI Director Kash Patel has taken what may be the first step in a purge of Trump’s personal enemies. His target? FBI analyst Brian Auten, who had, as directed, participated in the bureau’s 2016 investigation of Russian influence on Trump’s campaign. Auten was recently suspended from his job. (By the way, Patel has an enemies list of 60 people. Most would be enemies of Trump, too.)

As Patel was doing Trump’s dirty work in Washington, the president’s former personal lawyer, who is now US District Attorney in New Jersey, announced she would investigate the Democratic governor of that state for allegedly failing to aid the federal government’s crackdown on immigration. Alina Habbab revealed the probe on Trump propagandist Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News.

Another Democratic governor, Janet Mills of Maine, is now in Trump’s crosshairs for upholding a Maine law on transgender athletes in public schools. The law runs against Trump’s executive order banning transgender women from women’s sports. Now the state is being subjected to a number of investigations. Would you be surprised to hear that Trump has a testy personal history with Mills going back to 2020?

Finally, there is the matter of the January 6, 2021 pro-Trump rioters who violently seized control of nearly all of the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election results. Soon after Trump was inaugurated, the Justice Department attorney who oversaw the prosecution of the rioters was fired. Trump also used his presidential power to grant clemency to nearly 1,600 of the insurrectionists who were either convicted or awaiting trial. (Some had been found guilty of violent crimes.)

Like his attacks on individuals, Trump’s clemencies were a personal matter. He felt good about what happened on January 6 and about the citizens who had battled for control of the Capitol on his behalf. In the end, his feelings about who he likes and who he hates are running the show. This is who we are dealing with: A petty, vindictive man wielding great power to punish or reward people according to his emotions. It’s as if a child in the throes of the terrible twos were President of the United States.