833: Come Retribution

A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. Maybe a little hard to remember now, but when Donald Trump announced he was officially running for president again this time around, he did not seem inevitable. Far from it. It was a week after the midterm elections where the Trumpiest candidates lost some key races.

I was at Mar-a-Lago. It was a really flat speech. He was, first of all, it was teleprompter Trump. He was reading from the teleprompter and there was no fire and brimstone to it. It was kind of warmed over policy proposals.

But we will bring our supply chains and manufacturing base back home, as we were strongly doing during the Trump administration, and we will systematically bring back home.

People tried to leave the room. I mean, I was there in Mar-a-Lago, I saw people going to the exits halfway through the speech, and at one point there were so many people leaving that they actually blocked the exits. They told me it was for security reasons, but I don't think he wanted a half-empty Mar-a-Lago ballroom at the conclusion of his presidential announcement.

So not a great beginning. When did it turn around? Jonathan says that began with the speech that Trump gave a few months later, in March 2023, at the annual CPAC conference of conservatives. It was a very different speech, with a very different tone.

It's really dark, and it is filled with talk about getting, essentially, revenge at those who have wronged him.

Democrat prosecutors, oh, they're after me for so many things. Oh, those prosecutors. Some are racists, some hate our country. They all hate me. They'll get me for anything, anything.

This is the famous speech where he said, I am your retribution.

In 2016,, I declared, I am your voice. 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.

And that line obviously stuck out in the speech itself, but then speaking to Steve Bannon afterwards.

Steve Bannon, former Trump advisor, still apparently talks to him.

He said that was the pivotal moment in the campaign, that the campaign got its mojo and he kept on calling it the come retribution speech.

Come retribution, Bannon explained to Jonathan, was referenced to a book about a supposed plot by the Confederacy to kidnap and maybe kill Abraham Lincoln. The plan was codenamed Come Retribution, Vis a Vis Revenge.

I don't think that Bannon's calling for the assassination of Trump's political opponents or anything like that, but he is calling for, and Trump is calling for, an effort to get even with these people, to make them pay for their transgressions, their transgressions being crossing Donald Trump.

Weeks after that speech, former President Trump held his very first official campaign rally for the new campaign. Kind of a big moment. And it was not in a swing state or any place that he needed to pick up votes. The location he chose? Waco, Texas.

Now, I've been covering presidential campaigns for a long time and presidential announcements that often are weighted in symbolism. You know, Barack Obama in Springfield. He decides to have it in Waco, Texas. Waco, Texas, of course, is the place where the Branch Davidians, David Koresh, had their standoff with federal agents in 1993..

This, of course, ended in disaster. The place went up in flames. 75 people died.

It is the symbol for the far right of a government that is out of control and is a threat to its own citizens. So here is the place that Donald Trump goes to have his very first rally. When I asked Bannon about it, I was like, come on, Waco, what's going on here? He said, what do you mean? We are the Trump Davidians.

And what you saw on stage when the rally started, did it seem appropriate to the setting and to that context?

It was so remarkable. And a lot of people didn't really note it much, because we're early in the presidential campaign cycle. I mean, long before people are actually going to be voting. But it started with Donald Trump coming out on stage silently, as the speakers started blaring the national anthem performed by a group called the J6 Choir. The J6 Choir being people who are in a D.C.

6th.

Again, we're in Waco, Texas.

One nation, under God, indivisible,

It's the heart of his speech. It's the core of his message. The government is out of control. It is out to get you. I'm the guy standing in the way.

Prosecutorial misconduct is their new tool, and they are willing to use it at levels never seen before.

The impression that people have is that Trump hasn't changed. Yeah, he's outrageous. Yeah, he does controversial stuff. But that's actually not correct. Trump has changed, at least the message.

For those who have been wronged and betrayed, of which there are many people out there that have been wronged and betrayed, I have your retribution. We will take care of it.

And I didn't really think about it as a synonym for revenge until we were talking to people who had heard Trump say privately, no, actually, like, there are specific people who we are going to punish for the crime of criticizing Donald Trump.

People like his former attorney general, Bill Barr, who called Trump's idea that the election was stolen total nonsense, or the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley. They had a falling out. In public, Trump talks about locking up Republicans like Liz Cheney, the top Republican, in the January 6 hearings. And how could he do this? Well, the second thing that we know about Donald Trump's retribution is that he's probably going to use the Department of Justice to go after his enemies if he takes the White House again.

Kelly would just kind of say, yes, sir, and then kind of sit on it until he forgot about it and moved on. Like, this is. this is not a secret that Trump wanted to use power this way when he was president the first time. But you know, Jeff Sessions didn't do it. John Kelly didn't do it.

Trump has told people that his biggest regret from his first term was appointing people who told him no like that. He's not going to do it again. And the truth is, there's no law to stop any president from using the Department of Justice to go after people this way. It's just tradition. Which brings me to number three.

We will obliterate the deep state.

And we know who they are. I know exactly who they are. He tried to accomplish that in the last months of his first term by changing the rules with an executive order so that he could fire civil servants who didn't do what he wanted. When Joe Biden took office, Biden reversed that policy to what it was, but it's been reported that Trump loyalists are planning to bring it back.

If the Democrats are going to play this game, we've got to play the same.

We have to play by their rules. Now, when are we going to start arresting Democrats? That's what I want to know.

Republican AGs all over the country should pursue their own indictments. Take corrupt Democrats, put them on trial in front of juries that already hate them.

before the trial even begins.

Those are Todd Starnes on the Truth Network and Matt Walsh, who has nearly 3 million subscribers on YouTube. Here's Donald Trump Jr. If we don't start fighting fire with fire, they're just going to keep doing it.

They'll take their wins and they'll laugh, and when we do it back, they'll say, you're threatening democracy. It's like, wait, you're the ones literally trying to jail your political opposition.

So, what we have this year is an unusual candidate who is promising something we have not seen in a presidential candidate before, that, once he gets into office, he's going to take retribution on those who have opposed him. And he's telling us that he believes he has broad powers to command the Justice Department and other branches of government to help him do that. We wanted to take an hour to think about what that might look like and what it might mean for the people who are going to be most affected by it. And that is, people who have crossed him in the past, people on his enemies list. How seriously are they taking this?

Plainville, Kansas, is a small town, less than 2,000 people, the kind of place that feels very far away from the rest of the world, from its noise and its concerns and its dangers, which I think is part of what attracted Stephanie Grisham to the area.

See this lady right here?

A 70-ish-year-old woman in a colorful hat passes in front of Stephanie's car.

I really want to be her friend. She's always dressed to the nines and goes to all the high school football games. I just love her.

Stephanie moved here from D.

It's been a lot to get used to, but, man, I've sure grown to love it. I really have. Really? Yeah.

Stephanie's previous scene was the White House. She was one of the Trump staffers who lasted the longest. She went to a Trump rally two weeks after his descent on the Golden Escalator and was amazed by how he connected with the crowd. She'd never seen anything like it, so she signed up and lasted all the way until the storming of the Capitol on January 6th. I was interested in talking with Stephanie because when she was with the Trumps, it was actually part of her job to help them take retribution against their enemies.

I would always go with them during all the holidays. So I was at Mar-a-Lago with them for Christmas, New Year's, all the way to Easter. So I was just always there.

Always there. The Trumps are so literally in the room at so many critical moments. Like on election night in 2020, it was Stephanie who tiptoed into the first lady's bedroom around 1 to wake her, so Melania would be dressed and ready to go on camera when Trump came out to speak. As Melania got ready in the bathroom, Stephanie says that she sat with Barron at the end of her bed watching television news and calling out the results, so Melania would know which states had been decided. Really, Stephanie's been through all kinds of things with the Trumps.

I mean, there was the time he felt that he needed to tell me that Stormy Daniels was wrong about his penis size. So that was a really weird conversation. And he called me from Air Force One, which made the whole conversation worse because there's a tiny delay between the person on the plane and the person on the ground.

January 6th was the turning point for Stephanie. She says she was horrified that Trump didn't immediately denounce the breach of the Capitol and attacks on Mike Pence. And when she reached out to Melania to ask her to intervene with her husband, Melania said no. For Stephanie, that was the last straw. She told me.

Oh, I knew I would be cast out. I knew I would immediately be a traitor. I mean, I helped do it to people. If anybody spoke out against Mrs. Trump or the president, I was the one issuing terrible, you know, statements, calling them a liar, saying they were looking for fame.

Stephanie says that since she was a Trump true believer, she mostly felt fine about this. She saw it as an important part of her job to push back. But still, she says, there were some uncomfortable moments.

I called Mitt Romney a scum, I think. And this is a man I had worked for and actually had really respected and was always really kind when I ever passed by him. And I remember, right when the word scum came out of my mouth, I inside was like, oh, that was way too far. Way too far. That was really harsh.

Stephanie says one of the only times Trump gave her very specific directions was after John Kelly stepped down as chief of staff and then criticized Trump in the press. Stephanie says at one point, Trump called her to say she needed to make a public statement, savaging Kelly, who is a person Stephanie liked and respected.

He said that I needed to call this reporter and say, General Kelly doesn't understand the genius of our great president. And he said, take it down, take this down. So I remember, I wrote it down and I hung up the phone and I sat there. and I remember I called my boyfriend. I called one of the deputy chiefs of staff at the time.

It was just very, very clear, Stephanie says, that Trump wanted you to be as ruthless as possible with his enemies. She says Trump seemed to genuinely admire people who were ruthless.

I remember one specific time when he we were in a bilat with President Erdogan of Turkey and we were all sitting around this table. I was, I think, maybe the only woman in the room, maybe a couple others. But out of the blue, literally, he just yells down to me, Stephanie, who do you think is the biggest killer, this guy, or President Xi of China? He asked me that in a room of 30 to 40 people, I'm supposed to decide who's the biggest murderer, as if that's cool. And I remember.

Unfortunately for Stephanie, Donald Trump doesn't usually forget his grudges. And maybe worse, it's not just Donald who's angry with her.

The worst part for me is that I'm on her radar. So, like a General Kelly, is not on Melania Trump's radar. So I've got like both of them. And I know that she is very, very good at revenge as well.

Now, I want to be clear, Stephanie seems to genuinely care for and in some ways even admire Melania Trump, since she was Melania's chief of staff and communications director. They got to know each other pretty well. And you can tell when you read Stephanie's book that even now she has fond feelings for her former boss, misses her even. But she's seen what Melania is capable of. She says Melania has tried to use the government to go after enemies in the past.

She had a friend who kind of worked for her, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who also wrote a book about her while we were in the White House. And when Stephanie's book came out, Melania wanted to sue her, because that's what they do. The Trumps sue people. And Melania's reasoning was she wanted to sue Stephanie for violating a nondisclosure agreement that Stephanie had signed. Well, we all signed.

I reached out to Pat Cipollone and the Justice Department to confirm Stephanie's story. Neither would comment. The Justice Department did file a suit against Stephanie Winston Wolkoff shortly after her book came out. The Biden administration dropped that suit its first month in office. But this story points to something that really worries Stephanie about a second Trump term.

He and she, they both can call forth these armies of people, mostly online, but certainly we've seen with January 6th and other situations that some are in public and you just get besieged with hate and bullying, and they know that and they wield that power like no problem. And I remember there were times with Mrs. Trump that I'd say, do you want me to put a statement out about, you know, this person who said something bad about you? And she'd say, no, no, no, we will let all my fans get them. And that meant the people online, you know, all her supporters would go after this person.

Several people I spoke to for this story told me that they feared Trump would encourage a kind of culture of vengefulness in a second term, and that MAGA zealots might feel liberated to do what they want because Trump's government will have their backs. After all, he has already promised to pardon the January 6th rioters. Which brings me to Fred Wellman and the way that fear of retribution from Trump supporters can infect a life. Fred lives in a suburb of St. Louis, on this residential street with modest houses.

You know, open the door, she jumps down three steps and sitting right here, where those garbage cans are, was a pickup truck sitting there, idling facing my house. And I'm like, okay, I watched him for a second, couldn't see, tinted windows, couldn't see what's going on. I'm like, that's strange. You're talking 10 o'clock at night. What got me going was I gave him bug eyes, you know, I looked at him, I gave him stink eyes like, what are you doing here?

And in your mind, what was the first thought you had about who could be sitting in that truck?

Trump supporters.

MAGA, MAGA, MAGA extremists, if you will. I'm on the list. I'm on the list.

And what do you mean by list?

Oh, enemies.

I'm on the MAGA enemies list.

To be clear, it's not a literal list, but Fred's definitely done enough to get on the wrong side of Trump world. Fred Wood's, executive director of the Lincoln Project, maybe you've heard of it. It's this group of high profile Republican operatives who set out to use their political know-how to keep Trump out of power in 2020 and immediately attracted attention and money. The group trolled Trump on Twitter daily and spent close to $80 million on a series of viral anti-Trump campaign ads. Trump responded with rage tweets.

I keep it open.

I love the picture of the devil. It's very subtle.

There it is.

That's my stepson. That's my dad, who's dead. That's my ex-wife's ex-husband. That's my brother. That's my mother.

They have all your email?

Yeah, but that's not me.

I guess there's a Fred Wellman who's a realtor. They keep mistaking for me. Poor Fred Wellman. I know.

Have you reached out to him and be like, sorry, guy?

He should change his name. I was first.

At the top of the page was a box which listed how many people had searched for Fred's name. There were 187.. And now this truck was sitting near his driveway. Could it be a Trump supporter?

So, anyway, I did what I do, which is, you know.

Just explain what this is.

I have a 9mm handgun, a Smith & Wesson 9mm.

In the drawer by your bed? Yeah.

Yeah. Or actually on the nightstand.

Before getting sideways with Trump world, Fred didn't keep guns in his house, much less on his bedside table. It's not that Fred's uncomfortable with guns. Fred's military. He went to West Point, was a protege of David Petraeus, served in Desert Storm, and had three combat tours in Iraq. It's just that after his time in the military, Fred struggled very seriously with PTSD.

Easy access to guns kills veterans. So it was a big deal for me to go ahead and get one.

Did you have, is it okay for me to ask, did you, at a certain point, have real trouble with suicidal ideation?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was a constant companion to me for many years, many, many years. But I went to treatment for PTSD back in 2018, as my wife and I separated. And I took that.

That's why Fred swore off guns. At least until he was promoted to executive director of the Lincoln Project in 2021.. MAGA supporters already hated them. But on his first day on the job, something happened that unleashed a whole new level of fury at the group. One of the Lincoln Project's founders admitted to sending sexually suggestive messages to young men, which turned MAGA's anger at the group up to 11..

I need to have it in the same room just to make sure, in case somebody kicked the door in or came in the back door, that I'd at least be able to fight back. I had a whole plan of where I'd fall back, what safe room, I set up. a safe room. I mean, just put my extra ammo in the bathroom upstairs.

Which brings me back to that night in late January and the truck parked in front of Fred's driveway. Fred told me he peeked through the blinds with the gun in his hand, waiting, until eventually it drove away. At the time, did you question, am I being paranoid?

Oh yeah, I always do. You always do. I mean, why wouldn't you? You know, it's a weird thing to think, so you might want to, you know, it's just, it's so ridiculous. The idea, even, even somebody who lives this life is wondering, you know, am I just being ridiculous?

Does it bother you to think that you're paranoid?

Yeah, it does.

But that's their goal, right?

I mean, the goal, I think, for all these guys is to make us on edge, to wear us out, to make you quit, to say, you know what? This is too much heat. This is too much danger for me. And I have peers who have done that. I have peers who have backed out of their, you know, quieted down or gone to other things.

And that's you?

That's me. Oh, yeah, that's me in many ways. Kids are grown. You know, I'm not married, so my wife's not going to get hit with anything. I'm on my own.

Fred and Stephanie both worry that in a second Trump term, he'll install people in the federal government who will come after them, in the IRS, in the Justice Department. Like, for example, they both think their taxes could be audited.

Or I don't know if they would have DOJ come after me for, like, treason. He was big on treason.

What do you mean? he was big on treason?

He would always just, if people spoke out against him, that's treason. That's treason. He just, that's what he felt. It's not going to be just about Donald Trump or Melania Trump. Some people who will also be placed, without a doubt, into the administration, they too will be empowered to go after people they perceive were traitors.

You wanted to talk about earlier, what is it going to look like for people like me? Let's say you say you replace half the IRS with MAGA extremists. And they go through people like me's books. You know as well as I do, I probably didn't cross it to your dot on I. It's not hard to find a crime when you look for it.

Which is why Fred and his girlfriend have been making plans. Can you just explain the trip that you're going to be taking this summer?

Yeah, we're going to go abroad. I've done the research of what needs to do to establish the first steps in the process to find yourself living somewhere else. And we're planning on taking some of those steps this summer, just to be safe. You know, establishing bank accounts and travel patterns, making contact with the local passport offices, those sorts of things.

There are other ways that Fred has adjusted his life in anticipation of a Trump presidency. Explain that. Why? Why are you not married?

Well, there's no legal entanglement that way. They can't go after her because she's my partner, my wife. We have not intertwined our finances, for example, just in case. I do not want my challenges to affect those who I love, be it my kids, my partner, even my ex. I do not want them entangled in this.

As for Stephanie, she doesn't like to talk about what she'll do if Trump gets elected for a second term. The only thing she'd say on the record is that she has also considered leaving the country. In fact, Stephanie told me she's in this text group with four women, former Trump administration staffers, who have publicly repudiated him. All of them testified in front of the January 6th committee. She says that when Trump's poll numbers look especially good, they comfort each other with these half-funny, half-serious texts.

Like, our big joke is that we're going to end up in Gitmo. And I'm always telling people, will you just fill my commissary up? I love ramen. I'll just eat ramen all the time.

Because you think they're capable of that?

Yeah. I mean, yes.

Stephanie and Fred know that these hypotheticals seem really extreme, but they feel like they have no choice but to think about them.

It's messed up that the United States of America in 2024, because you have a political difference with someone who ran for office, you actually have to come up with a plan to possibly leave our country.

If Donald Trump wins on November 5th, Fred and Stephanie will have roughly two months before the new administration takes power to figure out what to do. Two months to make a decision about whether to stay or whether to go. In the meantime, they wait. Fred told me that a couple weeks ago, he had another visit from an idling truck.

Lee Spiegel is one of the producers of our show. Coming up, how's the plan for retribution affecting your marriage? And do Trump voters actually give a damn about Trump's calls for retribution? That's in a minute. Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Members, thank you for the opportunity to address the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

This is former Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman. He's the White House staffer who went to his superiors and officially reported the phone call that President Donald Trump had that led to his first impeachment trial. You remember this call? It was with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, back in July 2019.. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman wrote the talking points for President Trump that day.

I was concerned by the call. What I heard was inappropriate. And I reported my concerns to Mr. Eisenberg. It is improper for the president of the United States to demand a foreign government investigate a U.S.

In his testimony, Vindman emphasized that he did not go public with these concerns, but reported them up the chain of command as a job required because they had national security implications. He was not hoping to put the president on a trial. It was somebody else, an intelligence official, who blew the whistle and made the phone call public. But it was Vindman, who became the public face of all this, who testified in public at the impeachment hearings, wearing his medals and his uniform, and was probably the most dramatic testimony of the hearings. And there were consequences to that.

Well, when you walk into our house, you walk into a very empty space, high ceilings, that's why we have the echoes.

Literally has only dog beds in it, and we tallied 11 dog beds for three dogs across the house. Yeah.

Yeah, this is a room where there would be living room, furniture and curtains and stuff. Yes.

We have a plan for all of that, but we are not purchasing the furniture and the curtains, the window treatments, until we have a little bit more clarity on the election in November. because, you know, I don't know what we're going to do. We don't have plans to leave, but if Donald Trump is re-elected...

That sounds a little, that frankly sounds a little bit alarmist, and I understand the idea that we need to save money in general just to make sure that, you know, contingencies, which is.

Yes, that's fair.

Contingencies. Your contingencies are different than my contingencies. I think we have a different calculus for how we sort of calculate the danger.

What's interesting in talking to the Vindmans is that they do not agree on the danger they're in. It really drives home how nobody knows what Donald Trump's retribution is going to look like, who he's going to go after, or what he's going to try to do to them. And so you have all these people guessing, like the Vindmans. Rachel's best guess is that they really might need to leave the country. Things might get that bad for them.

No, not possible. I think. the fact is that I've served a full military career to protect this country, and I'm not going to give it up.

He gestures around the living room.

Well, I would just say that, you know, Ellie and I, our 13-year-old, have an ulterior motive here, and this is an ideal space to be able to.

This is not the point of the story, okay?

When I asked them each, separately, to explain why they see whatever danger they might be in, so differently, they each had the same answer, temperament.

Alex is exceedingly optimistic. It is a little annoying at times.

So I would revert to what my daughter says about us, which is that I'm responsible for fun and Rachel's responsible for safety.

Wait, why does it work out that way? You're the military officer. How is she the safety one?

Because I'm the fun one. I tend to be pretty optimistic and kind of on the happy-go-lucky side.

In person, at home, Alex Vindman is more boyish and funnier than the decorated officer you might have seen on TV, if you watched any of his congressional testimony. He's the one who'll clown around for long stretches with the little nephews and nieces at the pool, doing cannonballs and riling them up. He's the one who thinks things will work out. She's the one who takes a grimmer view of their prospects, and that's how it's been from the beginning of their troubles with Donald Trump, going all the way back to their very first conversation about the Zelensky phone call and what it might mean for their family. That first conversation, they both say, happened when the news broke about that phone call.

And we were laying in bed and he said, Can you please call and check on professional liability insurance tomorrow? And he rolled over and went to sleep and I was awake all night long.

He wanted her to check on buying professional liability insurance to cover legal fees. The Vimins were a couple who had to figure out how to deal with other hard stuff before this. Tough overseas postings, including three years in Moscow. They'd lost their first child, who was born four months early and died a week later. But this was something without any normal rulebook, testifying against a sitting president.

I mean, there was something I, I guess, commented on just within the past week, where he claimed that it was a perfect phone call. You know, actually, I could pull it up here. Give me a second.

Shifty, Adam Schiff, this is one of the most dishonest human beings. He's talking about the Democrat who ran the impeachment hearings, Adam Schiff. He made up my conversation that I had with the president of Ukraine. He made up the conversation. But here's what they didn't know.

He talks about these things all the time, like in multiple venues. This is literally two days ago.

And so that tells you, you're still on his mind.

Yeah, definitely still on his mind.

Alex and I talked about it. It was very chilling, I think, that he brought up the phone call. Because you'd like to think he moved on to other people that he hates. Liz Cheney. I don't know.

If things did get bad, what do the Vindmans think retribution for them might look like? From Donald Trump or the people around him? I asked them to rank from most likely to least likely. At the top of the list was some of the stuff other people told us. They tried to take Alex's pension or entitlements.

Yeah, I don't want to seem like a nut, but if you just Google or just do a search on Twitter or something, for, you know, what they want most of all is Alex to be arrested and tried for treason. They truly think that he went against his commander-in-chief and that is an act of treason.

That's what the MAGA people feel.

Right, the MAGAs.

His most far-fetched fear? Again, neither of them think these things are likely.

I think about the fact that I'm an immigrant and is there any chance that I could lose my citizenship as a nationalized citizen? And then I frankly don't have a country because the Soviet Union doesn't exist. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic doesn't exist. So that idea has probably crossed my mind once or twice. You know, that would be a tougher thing to bear than even some of the prosecutions or something of that nature that I would lose the fact that I'm an American.

I don't want to read too much into this, but her worst fear is that he'd die. And his worst fear is not that he'd die, but that he would lose his country.

And that there was no way for me to avoid being drawn into this. And his counsel was, don't mess around with these people. They could wreck everything for you, you know, derail your career and all that kind of stuff.

I was in the car. I was in the very back. And there was a lot of Russian. I understand Russian, but I don't speak it. But I could see them in the front.

And he was actually more concerned about, like, you know, the Soviet context would be imprisoned, murdered or things of that nature.

He thought you could be imprisoned and murdered.

Well, I mean, we had lived in the U.

His testimony, Bidman nodded to that disagreement with his dad. Talked about how, in many countries, including Russia, raising concerns about the president's phone call, even privately, in the chain of command, would have severe repercussions.

And offering public testimony involving the president would surely cost me my life.

Alex says that at the time that really seemed true to him, that he could testify without serious repercussions.

But today, I'd say if we go into 2024 with Trump being reelected, I wouldn't have that kind of confidence going forward. I still have a lot of faith in this country. But if we do elect Trump a second time around,

Act. Three. Four more years. Okay, so we've heard from a bunch of people who are dreading a second Trump term. What about the people who are excited about Trump winning, who've been gearing up for it?

The first group of voters I talked to, they were at a Trump rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, literally on the boardwalk with arcade games. And today, a Justice for January 6th Prisoners tribute band.

Lower inflation. Gas prices. Migrants. The border's closed.

100% economy. I drive a pickup truck and shit's getting expensive for me.

Lower rent, mortgage, that kind of thing. I have a 28-year-old that's trying to buy a home and we told them not even to bother to move out right now.

Just to bring things back to a normalcy, to bring fuel prices back, just try to take it back to the way it was, you know, four years ago.

Notice what never came up. Retribution. This is very obviously not a scientific sample, but still, out of about two dozen people, none of them mentioned it. I even brought up specific people who crossed Trump, like, testified against him in the New York trial. And people were like, eh, I don't know.

No, I don't think so. I don't think he gives two craps.

Really? Even though he, like...

No, of course he probably hates them. But no, I think he has more important things to do. Exactly. I think he's going to put it behind him.

Do you think he's going to go after Biden? No, he's not. Biden's an old man. He's not going to live that much longer.

I don't see retribution or revenge. He is for the people. He is for helping the people. That's what we need.

You know, when Trump started this campaign, something that he said was, I am your warrior. I am your justice.

Retribution, right? Is that the word he used? Yeah.

What do you think, if, like, if he does end up using the DOJ to go after his political enemies?

That's what they're doing. So now he knows how to do it. But he won't do that.

To everybody here, retribution isn't some hypothetical future thing to be afraid of. It's already here. It's happening now, under Biden. Biden is the one using his Justice Department to persecute his political opponent, sicked special prosecutors on him, sent the FBI to raid his house. There's no evidence any of that's true.

So they have weaponized the DOJ. Look at Mar-a-Lago, the raid.

You're like, the Justice Department is totally politicized.

They're using the, you know, their power and authority. They're abusing their power and authority in order to silence this person, because, for whatever reason, they have so much hatred towards Donald Trump. And it's like, you hate him that much?

Would you be comfortable with the president going after his political enemies, like using the DOJ?

No, no, that's not what it's designed for. No, I wouldn't.

I don't think that's what's happening to him. I don't think that's right.

This brings me to something I want to draw your attention to. Something very different from most of what you've heard this hour. A significant number of people in my unscientific sample told me they don't want Trump or anyone else to use the powers of the federal government to take down their political opponents. They want things the way they used to be. They want things back to normal.

If he did a witch hunt, like we're going to do right now.

No witch hunt for a witch hunt. And what do you want Trump's Justice Department to look like?

Well, you know what? I don't know, but maybe it should be non-partisan.

It sounds like you don't want the Justice Department to be used by a president to go after their political enemies. And you kind of feel like that's what's happening now.

Free Trump! Free Trump! Free Trump! Free Trump! Free Trump!

You know what looked extra bad to Trump supporters? Trump getting convicted of 34 felonies in the middle of Manhattan by a bunch of people who probably didn't vote for him. I ran over to Trump Tower the day after the verdict, where supporters were gathering to hear Trump speak. I was wondering if I was going to hear anything different. at this fever pitch moment.

See, when he's saying it, it's not like revenge that I'm going to go out and kill people.

or beat people, put them in jail.

It's to stop the deep state and stop corruption.

In a way, you think of it as making things fairer.

Yes.

Not like an eye for an eye.

He won't. He won't.

Even though he has said he would.

Not in the context that you're saying.

That guy was from the Bronx, but another guy I met had flown in from Indiana to support Trump during the trial. That's passion. Would you be comfortable with Trump using the levers of the federal government against his political enemies? He's talked about going after the Biden crime family, or he's talked about going after the radical AGs, radical prosecutors. Would you be comfortable with that coming from him?

No, my preference would be that as soon as Donald Trump is inaugurated.

as the 47th president, that he pardons himself, and he pardons Joe Biden.

Well, Joe Biden's not on trial right now.

No, he's not on trial now, but I would like him to issue a pardon for the crimes that he has done, rather than prosecuting him,

so that no one could prosecute him.

If Trump becomes president, you just want to move on.

Yes.

The Trump administration doesn't seem to be motivating these Trump voters as much as it's motivating Trump himself. But if it's not turning them away, it sure doesn't seem to be, then he has a good chance of getting into the White House. If he gets there, it won't really matter what was driving the voters. He'll be able to do whatever he wants.

Zoe Chase is a producer on our show.

Who do you think is the biggest killer? This guy, or President Xi of China?

I'm Eric Goss. Back next week, more stories of This American Life.

This American Life.