Former President Trump's actions against perceived political foes, including revoking security details and removing portraits from public displays, have sparked concerns about his willingness to abuse presidential power and establish an authoritarian state.
A question that loomed over Trump ’s 2024 campaign was whether he’d use presidential powers for retribution against his perceived political foes. For some, the answer has arrived. John Bolton , a former White House national security adviser who wrote a damning book about Trump ’s first term, lost the Secret Service detail assigned to protect him from over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and who has been a target of far-right anger ever since.
(Fauci has hired his own private security team in response.) A portrait of former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, who criticized Trump’s handling of the January 6th Capitol riot and was removed from the Pentagon’s hall of heroes, was also mysteriously taken down. It was unclear who ordered the removal or why. The move echoes a pattern of Trump retaliating against perceived enemies. A group of dozens of former national security officials who’d signed a letter during the 2020 campaign opining that emails from a laptop belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter had the “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” also lost their security clearances. These actions raise concerns about Trump’s willingness to use presidential power to punish his enemies. “There are plenty of early warning signs that confirm the worst fears of people who were concerned about a second Trump administration and what it would mean for the rule of law,” David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official under Republican and Democratic administrations, said in an interview. “The real question remains what checks and balances will there be to prevent the creeping establishment of an authoritarian state in the United States.” The White House did not respond to a question about whether Trump personally ordered these actions to be taken, or whether the motive was reprisal. Talking to reporters in recent days, Trump defended canceling Secret Service details for Fauci, Bolton and others. “I thought he was a very dumb person,” Trump said of Bolton, adding that the government can’t pay for people’s Secret Service protection in perpetuity. (Ex-presidents receive lifetime security details.) “When you work for government, at some point your security detail comes off,” he told reporters. “And you know, you can’t have them forever.” A White House spokesman, meanwhile, said the former national security officials deserved to lose their security clearances. a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council. “They greatly damaged the credibility of the Intelligence Community by using their privileges to interfere in a presidential election. President Trump’s action is restoring the credibility of our nation’s institutions.”With NBC News’ “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker, Trump was asked if he would look to punish his predecessor, President Joe Biden. “I’m not looking to go back into the past,” he said. “I’m looking to make our country successful. Retribution will be through success.” He is plainly aggrieved, though, about the way he believes he’s been treated by the courts, prosecutors and Democratic officials.In an Oval Office interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity last week, Trump said: “I went through four years of hell by this scum that we had to deal with. I went through four years of hell. I spent millions of dollars in legal fees and I won, but I did it the hard way. It’s really hard to say that they shouldn’t have to go through it also. It is very hard to say that.” The Trump administration’s moves thus far impose varying levels of hardship for those on the receiving end. Milley’s portrait had been unveiled 10 days before Trump’s swearing-in. Its abrupt disappearance from a wall may serve as a warning to future chiefs that they, too, can be erased from Pentagon history if they fall out of favor with the commander in chief. Bolton said he’s taking private safety measures now that he’s lost his Secret Service detail. In 2022, the charged a member of Iran’s feared Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in a plot to murder Bolton, likely in retaliation for the Trump administration’s killing of an Iranian general two years earlier. Biden first provided Bolton with a security detail in December 2021, and it had been renewed every six months since then — most recently last month, Bolton told NBC News.“It doesn’t really matter to him the level of seriousness,” he added. “Each thing he can do makes him feel a little bit better.” Members of the U.S. intelligence community told him in the days before Trump’s swearing-in that the threat of assassination remained unchanged and had not gone away, he sai
TRUMP AUTHORITARIANISM SECURITY CLEARANCES RETRIBUTION BOLTON MILLEY
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