One of the biggest revelations in Watergate was the existence of Nixon’s enemies list. The episode was particularly dramatic because it was announced by CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr on live TV and as he was reading it he found his own name on the list. It was a tremendous scandal at the time which sounds downright quaint today what with the former president and current GOP nominee routinely calling the press the “enemy of the people” and publicly declaring his intention to prosecute his political rivals.
New York Magazine helpfully drew up a partial list which they promise will be updated as the threats add up:
Joe Biden and family, obviously
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg
New York Judge Juan Merchan
New York Attorney General Leticia James
New York Judge Arthur Engoron
Special Counsel Jack Smith and anyone involved in the federal Trump investigations/indictments
Those are the obvious ones. But there are more. Here’s the rest of the list with the evidence:
Members of the House January 6 Select Committee
On June 6, Trump attacked the committee and accused its members of committing crimes in a Truth Social post, writing at the end of the post: “INDICT THE UNSELECT J6 COMMITTEE FOR ILLEGALLY DELETING AND DESTROYING ALL OF THEIR ‘FINDING!’”
Journalists and media organizations
Trump continues to attack members of the media, or at least those he views as unfriendly to him and his causes, as “the enemy of the people.” In a September 2023 Truth Social post, Trump attacked NBC News, MSNBC, and the organizations’ parent company, Comcast, before adding:
I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events. Why should NBC, or any other of the corrupt & dishonest media companies, be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE? They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country!
During an appearance on Steve Bannon’s podcast late last year, former Trump National Security Council member Kash Patel, who according to the New York Times will likely have a senior national security role in a second Trump administration, vowed that the administration would go after journalists. Though Patel said a second Trump administration would “follow the facts and the law,” he also said:
We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. We’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.
Nonprofits and charities that support migrants
In a November 2023 Truth Social post, Trump vowed that, “For any radical left charity, non-profit, or so called aid organizations supporting these caravans and illegal aliens, we will prosecute them for their participation in human trafficking, child smuggling, and every other crime we can find…”
Retired Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley
In September 2023, Trump posted a message on Truth Social attacking Milley over phone calls the former top general made to China in October 2020 and January 2021 (two days after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol) offering reassurance that Trump was not planning to attack China. Milley later said that both calls, at the time, were cleared by senior Trump administration Defense officials. But in his Truth Social post, Trump suggested Milley had in fact committed treason, writing that:
This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act. To be continued!!!
Employees at the National Archives
Per a Rolling Stone report in October 2022, Trump has expressed an interest in purging the federal agency — which he has said is “woke and broken” —after it sought to recover classified documents Trump took from the White House at the end of his presidency:
Trump has told close associates that he wants to gut the nonpartisan historical agency, which the former president believes is full of anti-MAGA subversives, two sources with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone. Trump has said he plans to make it a priority if he wins a second term, the sources say.
In some of these conversations, the former president has referenced specific officials — all installed during Democratic administrations — who he’d want to immediately “get rid of” and have replaced with pliable loyalists. One of these sources says that it was clear from the conversation that someone in Trump’s orbit had been slipping him names or lists of potential targets.
Mark Zuckerberg
In a February Truth Social post, Trump accused the Facebook/Meta CEO of interference in the 2020 election, citing an unproven allegation that the billionaire attempted to help Democrats via a nonpartisan nonprofit which donated millions of dollars to help bolster the operations of 2,500 local election offices ahead of the election.
“He cheated on the Election(s). The whole system is RIGGED. Why isn’t he being prosecuted?” Trump wrote.
Stay tuned. I’m sure there are more we don’t know about and more to come. You can be sure that he has a much longer list of journalists and like fascists before him he will also target people on his own team (as he did to Bob Good, a MAGA Republican who had the nerve to endorse Ron Desantis) just to keep the cult in line.