Alex Isenstadt

Sure. So I titled the book Revenge because revenge was a centerpiece of his campaign and it was in many ways the goal of the campaign. It was the playbook. And one of there are a couple of really important and interesting anecdotes regarding revenge. the notion of revenge. There was a point early on the campaign, Trump gives a speech at CPAC, right?

Where he says, where he basically promises revenge. He says, I will be your retribution. And that was a line that Trump came up with behind the scenes, and I tell this story,

where he's sitting there with his aides and he comes up with this line and he isn't he and his team say this line is perfect before he gets on stage his team actually prints out gets ready a bunch of merch that was based on the retro the i will be your retribution line so it's ready to go as soon as trump says it and from that point on trump had a major central theme to his campaign

Let's move forward about eight months, nine months after that speech, maybe closer to a year. Joe Biden gives his State of the Union in 2024. And in that speech, Biden basically says that Trump is going to be bent on revenge. Trump is behind the scenes. He's back at Mar-a-Lago. He's with his team. They're watching in the Mar-a-Lago library room. And he says to himself, he says to his team,

There will be no revenge. Wink, wink. And that tells you right there that Trump was being sarcastic about joking about it. He knew that revenge was a centerpiece of his campaign and it would be a centerpiece of his White House if he got elected. And that was a line where he would joke about revenge a lot of the time on the airplane, on his plane. He would talk about it.

Biden was making this a central part of his argument. And Trump would say, look, yeah, he would joke about it. I'm not I'm there will be no revenge. But there's actually another really interesting point in the book. And that is when Trump is in he's in Washington, D.C. for his January 6th indictment hearing. He goes to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and he gives a press conference.

As the press conference wraps up, a reporter from The Washington Post asks him, will you promise that there will be no violence if you lose the election? Trump walks away, doesn't answer the question. Unclear if he heard it, but regardless, he walks away. The story blows up, the fact that he didn't answer the question. So Trump at this point is on his way from Washington, D.C.,

to Iowa where he's going to have a town hall event that night with Fox News. One of Trump's aides comes to him and tells him about the story, how it's blowing up and says, look, you're going to get asked about this on Fox News. This is a story. This is an issue. It's gaining traction. You're going to be asked about revenge.

And it was there that Trump and advisers knew that at least for the time being, they had a bit of a political problem. Right. And so they get to they get to Iowa. They're sitting backstage before this event. And.

And what happens is there's a mole that the campaign has within Fox News, and this mole screen gets copies of the questions, screenshots them to the Trump campaign, which is with Trump backstage in a holding room.

the team looks at the questions and they say we just got the test questions the questions to the test before the test even takes place and so they go through the questions and they start sort of practicing what they're going to say, workshopping answers. And it was there that one of the questions indeed was about revenge. And it was there that Trump and his team come up with an answer.

So Trump goes on stage. He's asked the question verbatim as it appears on the list. And he comes up with his answer, which is our revenge will be success. And it's a line, if you go back and you watch that tape, you can see he said the line with confidence. He had it practiced. He had it rehearsed. It's for a reason. Trump was happy with that answer. He used it for the remainder of the campaign.

In fact, the day after the Iowa event, he speaks with Ronna McDaniel, who at that point was the Republican National Committee chairwoman. And he says, did you see the answer I gave last night? He was happy with the answer. He kept on using it going forward.

Yeah, no, he clearly wants retribution against the people who he feels wronged him. He's very focused on it. And in fact, it actually became a strategy of his campaign and it may have actually in some ways helped him electorally. He presented himself, I write in the book, as a vessel. He became a vessel for a lot of people's frustrations.

He cast himself as a victim of a deep state establishment, a system of elites that was out to get him, the same system of elites that he convinced a lot of people that were also out to get them. His supporters and a lot of people, some of whom actually in the past have voted Democrat, came to see him as a vessel for their frustrations.

And so revenge and the notion of revenge against elites was something that may have helped him electorally. It's something that may have helped him politically. He now gets into the White House. And what we see is that his desire for revenge against any number of people, particularly, I would say, the people who were involved in the January 6th investigations.

One of the biggest things that Trump focused on during the campaign was January 6th. and this idea of lawfare, this idea that there's a legal system that's out to get him. What you see him do over the last few weeks is a systematic purge of the DOJ and the FBI of people who were involved in the January 6th investigation.

And then you go back to last week, last Friday, where Trump is having where Trump goes to the DOJ, gives a speech about ending about ending lawfare, essentially, which is in some ways a remarkable moment. Right. It's unusual. Typically, a president and a White House keep the DOJ at arm's length. Right. The DOJ is considered an independent agency.

But Trump sees himself as very interested and very involved and very invested in what happens in the DOJ and the FBI. And in fact, during the campaign, Trump gave perhaps the most thought when he was thinking about cabinet secretaries, when he was thinking about who might staff his administration, he was easily the most focused on the DOJ.

Yeah. Yeah. And here's the thing, which is that he's been running against if you think about he's been running against the judicial system now ever since January 6th. Right. And you could make the you could make the case. that it helps him politically, right? I mean, or at least he's decided it's helped him politically. He's in some ways turned his supporters against the judicial system. Why?

Because the judicial system is independent or it's supposed to be independent. And every time the judicial system tries to stop him, then every time the judicial system tries to stop him, he can cast them as an agency or a group that is somehow trying to stop him and what he's trying to do and therefore turn himself into a victim.