If You Want to Understand Trump, Understand This: Revenge Is What He Cares About Most

That’s what he says.

Then-candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire on February 8, 2016.Dennis Van Tine/MediaPunch/IPX

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

With the recent developments in the Tale of the Mad Kingā€”the revelations that President Donald Trump tried to fire special counsel Robert Mueller last year, that Trump was enraged that former FBI director James Comey was allowed to fly back to Washington on an FBI plane after he canned him, that Trump told FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe he should ask his wife what it was like to be a loser, that Trump has supported the release of a dodgy classified memo drawn up by Republican aides that supposedly questions a super-secret surveillance order approved by the Justice Departmentā€”there has been much speculation that Trump’s master plan is to remove any institutional obstacle that might impede his ability to give Mueller the boot. That may well be true. Mueller, with his 16 prosecutors highly experienced in money-laundering, organized-crime, white-collar crime, and cybercrime prosecutions, has demonstrated a seriousness of purpose that ought to scare any sentient person on the special counsel’s radar screen. But there could be a more basic motive propelling Trump: his obsession for revenge.

I wrote about this prior to the election (for all the good it did), noting that one constant in Trump’s life was his profound desire to get even and smite any of his detractors. Often he follows this impulse when a reasonable person might conclude it was self-defeating. As I noted back then:

Revengeā€”itā€™s a big part of Trumpā€™s life. Following the first presidential debate, he spent days of valuable campaign time (and hours of valuable sleep time) slamming Alicia Machado, the former Miss Universe. At other times during this contest, he could not let go of his feud with Rosie Oā€™Donnell. He tried to smear Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the American-born federal judge hearing a fraud case against Trump University, as a ā€œMexicanā€ unqualified to preside over this litigation. For days, he derided Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq, after Khizr criticized him during a speech at the Democratic convention. He launched misogynistic attacks against Carly Fiorina and Megyn Kelly. Rather than attempt to unify his party after a divisive primary fight, he threatened to finance future campaigns against GOP rivals, most notably Ohio Gov. John Kasich. He encouraged violence against protesters at his rallies. And there were the mean and nasty nicknames: Lyinā€™ Ted, Little Marco.

Trump seems to live to settle grudges. For him, retaliation is a religion. But don’t take my word for it. Take his. In speeches and public talks Trump gave in the years before he ran for president, he hailed retribution as an essential element of a success. One example: 

In 2011, he addressed the National Achievers Congress in Sydney, Australia, to explain how he had achieved his success. He noted there were a couple of lessons not taught in business school that successful people must know. At the top of the list was this piece of advice: ā€œGet even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.ā€

In that article, I cited multiple instances of Trump expressing this sentiment. In an 2007 speech, he shared his first rule of business:

Itā€™s called ā€œGet Even.ā€ Get even. This isnā€™t your typical business speech. Get even. What this is a real business speech. You know in all fairness to Wharton, I love ā€™em, but they teach you some stuff thatā€™s a lot of bullshit. When youā€™re in business, you get even with people that screw you. And you screw them 15 times harder. And the reason is, the reason is, the reason is, not only, not only, because of the person that youā€™re after, but other people watch whatā€™s happening. Other people see you or see you or see and they see how you react.

These are not the sentences of a well-balanced, gracious human being who can rationally assess costs and benefits. He has, of course, tweeted this notion: 

Others have noted Trump’s love affair with payback, including former House Speaker New Gingrich. In an interview before the election, he pointed out that Trump often loses his cool in response to ā€œanything which attacks his own sense of integrity or his own sense of respectability, and he reacts very intensely, almost uncontrollably, to those kinds of situations.ā€ He opined that “thereā€™s a big Trump and a little Trump,ā€ And, too frequently, Little Trump is in controlā€”or out of control. (Richard Branson wrote of an unnerving revenge-drenched encounter with Trump several years before the 2016 campaign.)

This is a serious matter. With President Little Trump in charge, norms and the rule of law are at risk. During the transition, Trump noted in several tweets that he believed the US intelligence community was out to get him. Since then, he has waged war on the FBI and the Justice Departmentā€”and ignored the intelligence community’s assessment that Vladimir Putin mounted a covert information warfare campaign to subvert the 2016 election to help elect Trump.

Now Trump is out to get themā€”whoever the them is in his feverish paranoia. He settled the score with Comey. He nailed McCabe, who was forced out this week. Now, it seems, Trump’s new target is Rod Rosenstein, the number two in the Justice Department, who Trump actually appointed. (With Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused from overseeing the Mueller investigation, that responsibility sits on Rosenstein’s desk.) Trump is like Michael Corleone bumping off his self-perceived enemies one at a time. 

The flip-side of Trump’s revenge-obsession is almost as bad: Trump has a profound yearning for acceptance, recognition, and compliments. How many times has Trump said that Putin is a good guy because he said something positive about Trump? Trump’s highly personalizedā€”you might say, narcissisticā€”view of the world can undermine national security. As Trump has sought revenge against his foes in the FBI and the Justice Department, he has this week eased up on sanctions applied on Putin’s regime for its meddling in the election. In short, for Trump, McCabe is a problem, Putin is just fine. 

The fundamental and inescapable reality is that a man driven by revenge is in charge of the federal government (and its nuclear arsenal). He has already demonstrated that this passion of his is a threat to the traditions and institutions of the Republic. As long as he remains at the helm, the state of the union will be unstable. 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate