Democrats said Trump’s targeting of his opponents resembled those in authoritarian regimes.
Andrew Bates, former senior deputy press secretary in President Joe Biden’s White House, said Trump was already “historically unpopular” because of a failure to tackle “costs, chaos and corruption that he promised to fight”.
“I don’t see the genius in following that up with ‘watch me spit on George Washington’s memory so I can dress up like Kim Jong Un’,” Bates told AFP.
‘Witch hunt’
Trump’s administration insists it is not about weaponising justice – the same thing it has accused Biden of doing.
“It’s about justice really, it’s not revenge,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Saturday. “They are sick, radical left people, and they can’t get away with it.”
But other recent comments showed how personal it was for the 79-year-old.
“James ‘Dirty Cop’ Comey was a destroyer of lives,” Trump said on Truth Social just hours earlier.
By “lives”, Trump meant his own, from what he calls the Russia “witch hunt” to the series of criminal and civil charges after his 2020 election defeat and the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots.
Now critics say it is Trump leading a witch hunt since his return to office. He has made unprecedented use of presidential power to make law firms, universities, federal employees and media outlets bend the knee.
He has also loaded the top echelons of US justice with allies, including the conspiracy theory-promoting Kash Patel as the current FBI chief.
But his revenge campaign has now entered a new stage in which his opponents risk time behind bars.
The American Civil Liberties Union said Comey’s indictment was “the latest in a series of Trump administration actions targeting political opponents of the President and exploiting the powers of the federal government to do so”.
‘There will be others’
Trump has also given up any pretence of maintaining the firewall between the White House and the Justice Department that US presidents have insisted on since the Watergate scandal toppled Richard Nixon in the 1970s.
Last weekend, Trump publicly berated Attorney-General Pam Bondi for failing to take any action against Comey and others – and got his wish within days.
Future targets could include former New York state prosecutor Letitia James, who brought a civil fraud case against Trump, and California Senator Adam Schiff, who led the prosecution at the President’s first impeachment in 2019.
The Justice Department is reportedly pushing for charges against John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser-turned-critic, whose house was raided by FBI agents recently.
“It’s not a list but I think there will be others,” Trump said Saturday.
When it comes to his attitude to his perceived enemies, Trump said the quiet part out loud earlier this month at the funeral of assassinated right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
Noting that the combative Kirk had still wished his opponents well, Trump said: “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.”
– Agence France-Presse
