Donald Trump likes to say that his campaign of vengeance is only fair. Given that he had to endure years of (supposedly) phony legal claims and censorship on various social-media platforms, Trump insists that he now has the right to retaliate in kind.
“They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!,” Trump wrote in a social-media post last week. “They did it with me for four years,” he told reporters.
But Trump’s plans are not going as he might have hoped. And he should have predicted as much. A favorite point Trump used to make about the many efforts to silence and convict him, besides that the news was all fake and his tormentors were all scum and secretly working for Joe Biden, was that these strategies were backfiring. “Every time they give me a fake indictment, I go up in the polls,” he would say. Trump is hardly an objective analyst, but about this, he was right.
He now seems to be similarly boosting the reputation of his enemies.
It was alarming when ABC announced the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live, a show the president had targeted for removal. But Trump’s censorship was so clumsy and overt—communicated in public via a mob-style threat by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr—that even loyal Republicans such as Ted Cruz squirmed. Kimmel was back on air within the week.
Disney, which owns ABC, quickly grasped that pleasing Trump risked alienating millions of subscribers and inviting a revolt among its talent. Kimmel enjoyed spectacular ratings for his return episode, and his viewership has stayed strong. Trump’s attempts to silence Kimmel served to make him more popular.
Trump’s prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey seems even more doomed than his campaign against Kimmel. The case against Comey, allegedly for lying to a Senate committee in 2020, is so flimsy that even right-wing legal analysts such as Andrew McCarthy at National Review think it should be dismissed. (McCarthy, who once wrote a book arguing that Barack Obama had committed at least seven categories of impeachable offenses, is not exactly a RINO.)
Whatever slim chance Trump’s prosecutors have of winning the case against Comey has been undermined by Trump’s own incessant public demands for his conviction. It will not be hard for Comey’s defense team to argue that he is the target of prosecutorial misconduct.
The underlying dilemma for Trump is that, although the presidency is a powerful weapon in the hands of an aspiring tyrant, it is not all-powerful. He can apply economic pressure to companies such as Disney, but his opponents have economic power of their own. He may wish to place large media outlets in the hands of loyalists, but he can’t prevent audiences from taking their business elsewhere.
Likewise, Trump can replace the Department of Justice with hacks and charge anybody he wants with crimes, but making these allegations stick is another matter. He still has to persuade juries, and that’s hard to do with meager evidence and a legal team that prizes fealty to the president over experience. Lindsey Halligan, the prosecutor tasked with the case against Comey, is a former White House aide and Florida insurance lawyer who has never worked as a prosecutor. If—or when—Comey wins his case, he is sure to come out looking like a hero.
Trump’s second-term strategy is premised on using state power for propaganda and intimidation. What he seems to have forgotten is that his election relied on his defiance in the face of a “woke,” illiberal mob. Young voters, in particular, saw Trump as a vehicle for expressing their own resistance to COVID-era public-health restrictions and leftist scolding. “Young people tend to favor political personalities perceived as edgy, rebellious and countercultural,” USA Today’s Charles Trepany opined on Trump’s appeal to Gen Z “bros” in November. “In past generations, those personalities were liberals; now, they say, those personalities are MAGA conservatives.”
Trump seems to think he can consolidate power by turning the MAGA cult from a countercultural rebellion into a tool for state-sponsored submission. That is a frightening ambition. It also looks to be beyond his grasp.
