Trump’s 2024 campaign is all about revenge

In his under-recognized 2007 book Think Big and Kick Ass: In Business and Life, Donald Trump dedicated a chapter to “Revenge.” He wrote: “My motto is: always get even. When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.”

Vengeance is a lifelong theme in the Donald J. Trump story, narrated as it is by Donald J. Trump. In 1992, he told the interviewer Charlie Rose: “I love getting even with people.” He’s fond of quoting Alfred Hitchcock: “Revenge is sweet and not fattening.” In January this year, after his primary victory in New Hampshire, he reiterated: “I don’t get too angry — I get even.”

Trump knows that the presidential election of 2024 could be the most delectable payback of all. Following the humiliation of his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 — a stolen election, he and many others believe — and the exhausting persecution he has suffered ever since at the hands of the US legal system, he senses that Lady Luck, his favorite mistress, is once again bending his way.

He has made “Retribution” the leitmotif of his campaign. “In 2016, I declared I am your voice,”!he told the Conservative Political Action Conference. “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.”

‘I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution’

It feels so nice he says it twice. That’s the hypnotic and consuming power of Trump’s language. The “I” is “you” — his grievance is your grievance, and vice versa. In our angrily narcissistic age, when everyone feels famous online and thwarted off, the message is almost irresistible.

This week, Trump cleared two more big obstacles blocking his path back to the White House. On Tuesday, Super Tuesday, he all but wrapped up the Republican nomination, winning fourteen of fifteen state primaries and forcing Nikki Haley finally to accept defeat. The day before, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in his favor, overturning the state of Colorado’s decision that, under the “insurrection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, he should be barred from running for office. Now, unless something extraordinary happens, the stage is set for the rematch almost nobody wanted but everybody knew would probably happen: Trump vs Biden II: This Time They’re Even Older.

A key difference between 2024 and previous Trump presidential campaigns is that now he’s the favorite. He’s ahead in most national polls and almost all the crucial swing states — Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Biden has his own sense of triumphal destiny, however, and likes fighting talk as much the Donald does. He points towards his success in 2020 and the midterm elections two years later as evidence that he should not be written off. He may be frail and failing — his job approval is below 40 percent — but Team Biden is convinced that, faced with the very real prospect of another Trump term, the great American public will see sense and reelect the incumbent.

It’s true that since that shocking victory in 2016, anti-Trumpism has tended to win at the ballot. Biden’s problem, though, is that at least two-thirds of Americans feel their country is on the “wrong track.” That gives Trump an edge: as in 2016, he’s the “change” candidate. Trump’s supporters have always been attracted to his anti-establishment radicalism. Today, however, many independent voters feel that, while they may not like Trump, America and the free world were more stable and prosperous under his leadership. Media pundits like to say that Vladimir Putin is “trolling” when he suggests he would prefer another four years of Biden. Voters look at the evidence and think that, as Trump argues, Russia, China and the forces of Islamism have all been more assertive since Biden moved into the Oval Office.

Trump’s closest advisors say that his big mistake eight years ago was that, as a political neophyte, he tried to work with Washington. He appointed treacherous operators such as Reince Priebus or John Kelly, who worked with America’s most powerful institutions — the media, the justice system, the FBI, the CIA — to undermine him. Such talk might sound demented, but Trump’s experience in office gave him and his supporters plenty of reasons to be paranoid. The Trump-Russia investigation was largely hysterical, yet it dominated much of his first term and hampered his presidency.

This time, Trump avers he won’t make the same mistakes. “If you put me back in the White House, their reign is over,” he says. “I will totally obliterate the deep state. I will fire the unelected bureaucrats and shadow forces who have weaponized our justice system like it has never been weaponized before. Sick, these are sick people. And I will put the people back in charge of this country.”

Such rhetoric delights fans, but opponents point out that Trump II sounds a lot like the dictatorship they claim to have been resisting for the past eight years. The New York Times and other media are full of stories about sinister groups secretly plotting to implement Trump’s anti-democratic agenda. The Heritage Foundation is reportedly recruiting thousands of loyalists for its Project 25, a hostile takeover of the administrative state. A hardcore of “Christian nationalists” will, we’re told, drag America far to the right.

Trump insiders say such talk is yet more hysteria. “I hate that Project 25 shit,” says one campaign staffer. “All it does is produce unhelpful headlines the left uses. I’m sure some of the policies they support would be enacted but it’s not Trump’s project 2025. It’s the Heritage Foundation’s. And what even is Christian nationalism? Has Trump ever discussed it on stage? Don’t think so.”

In fact, Trump’s second-term plans are no mystery. They’re all laid out in a series of “Agenda 47” videos he put out last year. He will “build on his historic success” of reducing America’s dependence on China through “universal baseline tariffs.” “The heart of my vision is a sweeping pro–American overhaul of our tax and trade policy to move from the Biden system that punishes domestic producers and rewards outsources to a system that rewards domestic production and taxes foreign companies and those who export American jobs.”

He has proposals to restore law and order, execute drug dealers, “give power back to American parents,” “protect children from left-wing gender insanity” and “students from the radical left and Marxist maniacs.”

He warns that “World War Three has never been closer than it is right now” and pledges to smash “the corrupt globalist establishment that has botched every foreign policy decision for decades, and that includes President Biden.” He promises “peace through strength.” Easier said than done, but it’s a potent message when voters look at worsening situations in Ukraine, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Trump’s twin policy obsessions are immigration and energy security. He has said that he will not be a dictator “other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling.” He vows to undo Biden’s Green New Deal (“I call it Green New Hoax”) and revive US industry by “ensuring that America has the lowest cost of energy of any industrial country anywhere on earth… We will develop the liquid gold that is right under our feet… and more energy will mean lower inflation and it’ll mean more jobs.”

Trump and his advisors make no attempt to disguise their plans for a “blitz” on illegal immigration, which has escalated dramatically under Biden. His campaign proposes to use the armed forces and the military’s budget to secure America’s southern border and re-enact Eisenhower’s “operation wetback” program to deport undocumented aliens. He will also “urge Congress to ensure that anyone caught trafficking children across our border receives the death penalty immediately.” Such policies dismay liberal commentators. But the public are more horrified at Biden’s failure to control illegal immigration.

Trump’s more intelligent critics will say that he made all these promises before. Many others will call him racist and fascist. But, for all the fear and loathing that surrounds Trump, a majority could see his vengeful comeback as he does — as an almighty vindication. “When other people see that you don’t take crap,” Trump said in Think Big and Kick Ass, “they will respect you.” There’s something very American about that.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.