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He Loves Getting Even With People

Published by digby on April 11, 2025

Never say he didn’t warn us. Going back decades, President Donald Trump has publicly declared that his one overriding philosophy of life was the necessity of getting revenge on anyone he believes has wronged him. As he told Charlie Rose back in 1992, “I love getting even with people.”

Since his first run for president in 2015, he’s made it quite clear that he intended to exact revenge on his political opponents. He showed a little bit of discretion during that first campaign declaring that his rival Hillary Clinton “has to go to jail” ostensibly for her email server, but it was obvious even then that he wanted to use the presidency for payback.

He actually attempted to do it and was thwarted by the proverbial “guardrails.” The NY Times reported that in his first term, Trump did demand that the Justice Department prosecute Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey but was steered away from it by his White House Counsel Don McGahn who told him he didn’t have the authority to order such a thing. He finally managed to get his Attorney General Bill Barr to name a special prosecutor to investigate Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. They spent years trying to prove wrongdoing and ultimately failed because there wasn’t any.

It wasn’t until his third run for president that he really cranked up the threats. In his “comeback” speech at CPAC in 2023 he made no bones about what he planned if he were to win the White House again:

In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution….I am your retribution.

By that time, of course, his own list of grievances was a mile long, having been sued repeatedly and charged with several crimes related to actions he took as president and afterwards. Although he had a long history of lawsuits being filed against him and being found liable, and his crude personal behavior toward women was well documented, he persuaded his followers that he was being railroaded for political purposes. He framed his campaign as a restoration to the White House after the election was stolen from him in 2020 and tens of millions of people believed the lie.

At his first big rally of the campaign held in Waco Texas near the site of the government’s siege against the Branch Davidian cult, Trump repeated his “I am your retribution” line and added:

“the Biden regime’s weaponization of law enforcement against their political opponents is something straight out of the Stalinist Russia horror show. … From the beginning it’s been one witch hunt and phony investigation after another. … The abuses of power that we are witnessing at all levels of government will go down as among the most shameful, corrupt, and depraved chapters” in all of history.”

His henchman Stephen Miller does know how to produce a florid turn of phrase doesn’t he?

There were plenty of people pointing out that Trump was bent on revenge. He didn’t try to hide it. And some of his supporters in the media tried everything they could to get him to say that he wasn’t, that he was just going to restore impartial justice. He wouldn’t do it.

Fox News’ Sean Hannity practically begged him:

Dr Phil tried to give him a good talking point but he wasn’t buying it:

In fact, on many appearances such as this one on Newsmax he was explicit about his regrets for not throwing Hillary Clinton in jail and seemed to be suggesting that he still wanted to do it:

Even though he was saying these things there were many Republicans who insisted that he had no intention of getting retribution. And even he would say from time to time, “my revenge will be success” just to keep everyone guessing.

Since he’s been in office he’s completely dissolved any barrier between himself and the Department of Justice and his Attorney General Pam Bondi is honored to be his loyal hatchet woman. She has inappropriately trashed the reputation of any judge who rules against the administration and fired prosecutors who worked on the January 6th cases. And she is helping him with his crusade against the big law firms who represented clients who opposed him.

Trump is withdrawing their security clearances and threatening to bar them from government facilities, putting any business with the government at risk. It’s extortion, plain and simple, by the president and the Department of Justice and many of them have capitulated, agreeing to spend hundred of millions of dollars in pro-bono work, essentially becoming his personal army of lawyers, to do his bidding. As the presidential press secretary Karoline Leavitt said:

“Big Law continues to bend the knee to President Trump because they know they were wrong, and he looks forward to putting their pro bono legal concessions toward implementing his America First agenda.”

But this week, Trump finally went the distance and publicly issued presidential memos instructing his Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute two political appointees he believes betrayed him in the first term. The first was cybersecurity expert Christopher Krebs who testified truthfully that the 2020 election was secure despite Trump and his mindless acolytes’ conspiracy theories that the voting machines had been “rigged.” He instructed Bondi to investigate if Krebbs had violated the espionage act by providing classified information to someone who was not authorized to receive it. (The incredible chutzpah of Trump accusing him of the very crime that he has committed numerous times is impressive, even for him. But then, that’s probably the point.) He stripped Krebs of his security clearance and in an act of sheer, gratuitous malice, he did the same to the people Krebs works with at his security firm.

The other person he’s demanding be investigated is Miles Taylor, the former Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff who wrote the famous anonymous op-ed in the New York Times saying that there were people in the administration who were keeping Trump from going off the rails. When Trump announced his instructions he said that he believes Taylor committed treason.

Both men are being investigated for things they said that Donald Trump doesn’t like. The first amendment is apparently no longer operative at least for critics of Donald Trump.

The orders aren’t really meaningful in any legal sense. He could have just phoned Bondi and told her to look into them and taken away their clearances without a ceremony. But this is meant as a shot across the bow. Krebs and Taylor were Republicans, hired by Trump, and they were, in his view, disloyal to him personally. As he said in that Charlie Rose interview all those years ago, that is the ultimate crime in his book, and he’s going to “wipe the floor with them.”

For the moment, it’s Republicans being put on notice: cross him and you will pay the price. They’re listening. Democrats are almost certainly going to be next.

Carole Cadwalladr On The Digital Coup

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 11, 2025

She’s back with another warning

“We are watching the collapse of the international order in real time,” Carole Cadwalladr insists in a nervous return to TED. Learn how to fight back, she urges. First we have to name it: “It’s a coup.”

“It’s already later than we think.”

This Is What a Digital Coup Looks Like

“It’s a kind of power we’ve never seen before.”

“We are already living within the architecture of totalitarianism. It may not have been deliberate, but we now have to act as though we are living in East Germany, and Instagram is the Stasi.”

“Privacy is power.”

Appropriating your information is “more than theft. It’s a violation. Data rights are human rights.”

“We are not powerless. The 30,000 people who supported me proved that – we are not powerless. Because we know who we are, and we know what we stand for. And my question to Silicon Valley is, do you?”

It’s overwhelming. Between the Trump cult and the digital coup this gets harder every morning. Hell, we’re still trying to certify Justice Allison Riggs’s N.C. state Supreme Court seat she won in November. While we’re not working to stop the spread of global authoritarianism and a digital coup.

Survivors in Gaza and Aleppo have it worse. So it’s chickenshit, isn’t it, for us sitting in front of computers to give in to the creeps trying to threaten or sue us into submission? We’re better than that (I hope).

Street protests do little to change the political battlefield. And I’m as quick as anyone to dismiss them as little more than events designed to make us feel better about issues than to resolve them. But April 5 was a tonic, proving we are not alone. We are many. I’m hoping April 19 comes together bigger than the last, perhaps building toward a national stike.

“We are not powerless.”

* * * * *

Have you fought autocracy today?

National Day of Action, Saturday, April 19 (Details pending)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Facilitate This

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 11, 2025

Court would matter if Trump respected the law

Kilmar Abrego Garcia. (Photo via CASA.)

In its decision late Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court in an unsigned, unanimous opinion politely informed the Trump administration it must “facilitate” the release of a man it spirited off to a Salvadoran gulag last month due to its own “administrative error” (Washington Post):

A district court judge had ordered Kilmar Abrego García to be brought back to the United States by Monday night, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. issued a brief pause hours before the deadline, allowing the justices time to weigh a government motion to block the order.

In its brief order Thursday evening, the high court said the judge “properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”

But not so fast. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis’s initial order instructed the Triump administration to “facilitate and effectuate” Abrego García’s return to the U.S. SCOTUS sent the case back to the lower court to expand on what it meant by “effectuate.” 

The Court wrote:

The order properly requires the Government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. The intended scope of the term “effectuate” in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority. The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.

That is, another co-equal branch of our government mustn’t overstep its authority, something with which the Trump administration is thoroughly familiar. “Abrego García, a Salvadoran immigrant who is married to a U.S. citizen, was deported on March 15 despite a court ruling forbidding it,” the Post explains.

As a lame duck in 2020, Trump brought and lost dozens of lawsuits challenging his election loss to Joe Biden. Now with his sycophants installed in every cranny of the Executive Branch, with Trump-appointed judges throughout the federal judiciary, and with GOP control of both branches of Congress, Trump feels entitled to ignore adversarial rulings. In essence, “Make me.” Or “facilitate this.”

After instructing the lower court to give the Executive “due regard” in foreign affairs, SCOTUS suggested that the Trump administration “be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.”

Oh, we’re sharing now, are we, mugged Rachel Maddow on her show. “What is this, group therapy?” Maddow asked. “Do you feel you can share?” Is this a court order or not? Or a by-your-leave from the highest court in the land? Mustn’t make daddy angry?

Nowhere in its ruling does the SCOTUS ruling use the word “return” regarding Abrego García, notes Chris Geidner at Law Dork, adding, “Of the 13 judges — including seven appointed by Republican presidents — to look at the Trump administration’s actions here, none have sided with the administration.”

Does anyone think he or his lackeys care?

Geidner updates with this late news:

[UPDATE, 10:50 p.m.: Judge Paula Xinis issued an order following Thursday night’s Supreme Court ruling, ordering the government to “take all available steps to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States as soon as possible” and scheduling a status conference in the case for 1 p.m. Friday.

Additionally, Xinis ordered the Justice Department to file a declaration by 9:30 a.m. Friday detailing where Abrego Garcia is and what steps have been and will be taken to facilitate his return.]

Justice Sonia Sotamayor laid out her rather tart thoughts on the matter, and called bullshit on the Trump administration’s claims that Abrego Garcia’s fate now is out of its hands. Watch your backs. This is where Trump is haeding if he isn’t stopped:

The Government now requests an order from this Court permitting it to leave Abrego Garcia, a husband and father without a criminal record, in a Salvadoran prison for no reason recognized by the law. The only argument the Government offers in support of its request, that United States courts cannot grant relief once a deportee crosses the border, is plainly wrong. See Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 542 U. S. 426, 447, n. 16 (2004); cf. Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U. S. 723, 732 (2008). The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene. See Trump v. J. G. G., 604 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 8). That view refutes itself.

In lieu of divine intervention, a bit of karmic comeuppance for this nasty little administration would be welcome about now.

* * * * *

Have you fought autocracy today?

National Day of Action, Saturday, April 19 (Details pending)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

The Navalny Program

Published by digby on April 10, 2025

Trump’s been getting revenge on law firms that represented people he perceives as enemies and now he’s going after individuals by name. He’s making an example of these two but I’m sure they won’t be the last.

President Trump on Wednesday signed executive orders punishing two officials from his first administration and an elite law firm, continuing a campaign of retribution that he has gleefully carried out since his inauguration.

Two executive orders targeted Christopher Krebs, who as a senior cybersecurity official oversaw the securing of the 2020 presidential election, and Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Mr. Trump’s first term and anonymously wrote a high-profile opinion article for The New York Times in 2018. Among other measures, the orders directed Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, to investigate the former officials and report their findings to the White House.

Good luck to them finding a law firm to represent them:

A third order targeted the law firm Susman Godfrey with many of the same sanctions that Mr. Trump has applied to other law firms that had taken on cases or causes he did not like. In 2023, Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to resolve a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems over the network’s promotion of misinformation about the 2020 election. Susman Godfrey represented Dominion, a manufacturer of voting machines that lawyers allied with Mr. Trump attacked with outlandish claims about widespread voting fraud.

We’re all logically obsessed with the tariffs these days and the shock and awe of DOGE and Vought and Bobby Jr and all the rest is overwhelming. But the destruction of the rule of law continues, openly and without restraint and it may be the most destructive activity of all. This is full-on dictator behavior. And nobody blinks an eye. It’s just another atrocity among thousands.

Flamboyantly going after Krebbs and Taylor with an executive order is designed to intimidate anyone who might speak out. I would guess that it’s going to work quite well. Putin must be so proud of his protege.

Sure, He’s Fine

Published by digby on April 10, 2025

HR McMaster was surprised to pick up the phone to be told the president was on the line:

Just a day earlier, on March 2, Mr. Trump had lobbed his latest insult at McMaster, blasting him on social media as a “weak and totally ineffective loser.”  McMaster had also just appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” where he voiced skepticism about Mr. Trump’s overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Putin’s willingness to end the war in Ukraine. 

Trump called him Henry and started talking at which point McMaster understood that it was Trump and that he thought he was talking to someone else. His name isn’t Henry. When he told the president that he was talking to H.R McMaster this is how he weirdly

“Why the f*** would I talk” to H.R. McMaster? Trump asked dismissively, and then Trump launched into a scathing critique of his former aide, two sources said.

Did he tell the White house operator to call “Henry McMaster” by mistake? He gets names mixed up. Remember Tim Apple? Or did the operator just hear the name wrong and call the wrong number? He might have had a total brain freeze for all we know. But his response is truly weird. He’s the one who placed the call (or asked for it to be placed.) And yet he asked, “why the fuck would I talk to H.R. McMaster (or “you” it’s unclear)? That makes no sense.

He’s under tremendous stress and he’s surrounded himself with sycophants and eager henchmen. And he’s not all there.

Well, Ok Then

Published by digby on April 10, 2025

Are you fucking kidding me???

Trump played his cards close to his vest. He told advisers that he was willing to take “pain,” a person who spoke to him on Monday said. He privately acknowledged that his trade policy could trigger a recession but said he wanted to be sure it didn’t cause a depression, according to people familiar with the conversations. 

He could take “pain?? Really? How noble of him.

But he didn’t want them to trigger a depression which was awfully thoughtful, Long live King Donald. He cares.

Why He Blinked

Published by digby on April 10, 2025

It’s not hard to figure out

The Wall St Journal reported on what happened behind the scenes to make Trump blink yesterday. Apparently, he didn’t expect the markets to tank last week the way they did because he’s an idiot and has no idea what he’s doing. He was spooked enough that he started to listen to people other than Lutnick and Navarro and was finally persuaded by Bessent that he should “negotiate” rather than stubbornly insist that this plan was going to make the world bend the knee (or kiss his ass as he said at that GOP event the other night.) That’s stupid too but it bought them 90 days and I guess that’s the best they could do under the circumstances. No word on what happened to the tariffs forcing people to move their manufacturing to the US. I guess that’s off the table now? Whatever …

This is just precious:

Trump played his cards close to his vest. He told advisers that he was willing to take “pain,” a person who spoke to him on Monday said. He privately acknowledged that his trade policy could trigger a recession but said he wanted to be sure it didn’t cause a depression, according to people familiar with the conversations. 

Big of him to take the “pain” of a recession and also very thoughtful of him to draw the line at a depression. What a guy.

Banking executives—frustrated at their apparent lack of influence with administration officials—turned to Republican lawmakers in recent days to lobby Trump on the tariffs, according to people familiar with the matter. Their message was that Trump was going to tank the economy. 

Trump was also in listening mode. Over the past few days, he has been asking friends and advisers about the markets, and he indicated he was closely watching them. At the White House on Wednesday, he had lunch with financier and investor Charles Schwab and met with Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who had warned that Michigan was already feeling the impact of the tariffs throughout its automotive industry—events that came after his decision but signaled he was widely gathering input.

On Tuesday evening, Trump said that he absorbed the bad news about a plummeting bond market. “I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy,” Trump said Wednesday about the bond market. 

Trump, an avid consumer of cable news, said that he watched Dimon’s interview Wednesday morning with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business. During the interview, Dimon said a recession was a “likely outcome” of the new tariff program, but also defended the idea of some tariffs as a way to improve trade. He urged the president to give Bessent time to make deals. “I’m taking a calm view, but it could get worse,” Dimon said.

Dimon hasn’t had a substantive conversation with Trump for years, people familiar with the matter said. While his appearance on the Fox Business show had been in place for some time, Dimon knew that Trump and his inner circle often watched Fox and that his message would likely get through to them, one of the people said. 

Trump told reporters Wednesday he had been thinking about pausing tariffs “over the last few days,” adding “it probably came together early this morning, fairly early this morning.” He said he didn’t consult with lawyers for the wording of his announcement and instead relied on input from Bessent and Lutnick. “We wrote it up from our hearts,” Trump said. “We don’t want to hurt countries that don’t need to be hurt, and they all want to negotiate.”

God help us. This man is more demented by the day.

However, he’s not so demented that he didn’t give his rich buddies and family a little heads up. At 9:33 yesterday morning he posted “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT” And it surely was. Just a short time later he announced the pause and the markets surged. This was rank market manipulation but I’m quite sure nothing will come of it. There is no accountability for Trump and his buddies. The law is for losers.

Paul Krugman explains in his newsletter today that despite his acolytes hosannas over his alleged strategic brilliance, we all know that he made a massive mistake and the economy is not going to easily rebound from this:

Anyone sounding the all-clear on tariffs, or Trump economic policy in general, should be kept away from sharp objects and banned from operating heavy machinery. We’re in a hardly better place than we were before Donald Trump announced a tariff pause (in a Truth Social post, of course.) In fact, we may be in a worse place.

Let me make four points about Trump’s post-pause tariff regime.

1. Even the post-pause tariff rates represent a huge protectionist shock

2. Destructive uncertainty about future policy has increased

3. We’re still at risk of a major financial crisis

4. The world now knows that Trump is weak as well as erratic

Source: USITC and author’s estimate

He crunched the numbers and found that even with the pause, the effective tariff rate, as you can see in the chart, is almost as high as Smoot-Hawley:

But this still represents a huge jump in tariffs in a US economy that now imports three times as much as it did in 1930. Trump’s post-pause tariff regime remains the biggest trade shock in U.S., and I think world history.

You should read the whole thing but I want to specifically highlight number three because it’s not something I’ve heard much about:

Yesterday I noted that financial markets were showing the telltale signs of an incipient financial crisis. I looked mainly at the breakeven inflation rate, but many other indicators were also flashing yellow. Even yields on long-term federal bonds, normally a safe haven in troubled times, were sounding a warning.

The inimitable Nathan Tankus has a new post explaining why we were and continue to be vulnerable to a new crisis. He explains why the Rose Garden announcement may have been a new tariff-induced “Lehman moment” for the financial system. He explains a lot of stuff that I didn’t know or had grasped only vaguely — in particular, how hedge funds have become key providers of liquidity, even in the Treasury market (via the “basis trade.”) So when hedge funds’ portfolios take a hit from erratic policy, this quickly creates system-wide stress.

I’m planning to write a primer about financial crises and how they happen this weekend.

The level of financial market stress declined somewhat yesterday, but the situation remains fraught. Trump’s next stupid policy move — and there will be more stupid moves — could quite easily tip us over the edge.

Yikes.

I think the scariest thing I’ve heard in all this was Trump saying that he has relied on his instincts and will continue to do so. That’s not good.