Trump Isn't The Only Insurrectionist Worming His Way Into The United States Government

They're All Looking For Revenge

Derrick Van Orden is an angry, violent asshole. He’s a freshman Republican congressman from a swing district in western Wisconsin and he’s already had several incidents in Congress that included abusive outbursts and temper tantrums. He was also-- of course-- an uncharged J-6 insurrectionist. Several others are running for Congress this year, including one who wants to replace George Santos, two running against each other in Arizona, also a father-son team and Ohio crackpot J.R. Majewski again. Several have been convicted of felonies— like the QAnon Shaman. None are fit to even walk back onto Capitol Hill, let alone serve there… but Republican voters and elected officials seem to love them— just as they love the leader of the MAGA cult. And he’s angrier and more bent on revenge than any of them, especially now that he's lost, unanimously, his immunity appeal.

Trump decided that the best way to keep out of prison was to run for president again… and the GOP embraced his run— or were too impotent and morally bankrupt to stop him. Yesterday, Josh Dawsey and Michael Scherer looked at how scared Republicans are of Trump’s penchant for revenge. Many feel the they could be victims in a presidency obsessed with retribution, although “Trump has long distinguished himself as both surprisingly vicious and disarmingly transactional, often willing to forgive intractable enmity for short-term gain.” He pardoned Bud Light yesterday, “despite a ‘mistake of epic proportions’ because Anheuser-Busch ‘is not a Woke company, but I can give you plenty that are, am building a list, and might just release it for the World to see.’”

Trump, they wrote “has threatened to have donors to his Republican opponent Nikki Haley ‘permanently barred’ from his orbit. A top adviser has vowed to destroy the career of Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), House Freedom Caucus chairman, after he endorsed another Trump challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Trump campaign has also attempted to condemn former aides who worked for his rivals during the GOP nomination fight and have twisted arms demanding endorsements, telling lawmakers that Trump will remember exactly when they backed him.

The high-dollar donor community, which has been told in various ways to rally quickly behind Trump, has taken notice.

“People took that as, ‘I am going to be president and I am going to investigate you,’” said Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina GOP chairman and Haley backer, when Trump threatened to punish her donors. “There is always a threat. If you are not for him he’s against you.”

…[Trump’s] advisers have discussed trying to change personnel at the Republican National Committee to install people they view as more in line with Trump and controlled by Trump’s campaign, according to people familiar with the discussions. It is unclear exactly how they would do this, but Trump said in a Sunday morning interview with Fox Business that there would be changes at the RNC. The former president has discussed trying to immediately remove Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) from his Senate leadership post should he be reelected, and he has told advisers that he would want to immediately fire Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump as FBI director, following multiple federal investigations since he left office.

Some allies have kept lists of Republicans who have been critical of Trump in a bid to block them from getting jobs in a second term, according to a person with knowledge of the list. “You have a lot of people who want to come back in, but we remember what people have said in the past,” one longtime Trump ally said.

During a grueling primary, Trump has told advisers that he wants to make sure DeSantis is not the GOP presidential nominee in 2028 and that he wants to make his 2024 loss painful, people who heard his comments said. He has floated attacking lesser-known senators for not immediately endorsing him, according to people who have spoken to Trump.

Trump’s team turned up the pressure on endorsement holdouts ahead of the Iowa caucuses, and the former president quickly embraced the January endorsement of Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R) just months after calling him “hopeless” in a social media post. Trump warned Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who resisted calls to endorse Trump in 2021, that he “must be very careful” about his 2024 reelection race in a December social media post, while aides leaked word that Trump was talking of doing something more to punish his former 2016 rival. Cruz endorsed Trump after the Iowa caucuses, and Trump embraced the move as “wonderful.”

Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan (R) led the impeachment effort against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), a Trump ally, and later endorsed Trump’s presidential campaign. Just days later, Trump endorsed Phelan’s opponent, saying in a social media post that Phelan’s support did “not mitigate the Absolute Embarrassment Speaker Phelan inflicted upon the State of Texas and our Great Republican Party!”

He obliquely threatened Haley during his speech in New Hampshire, saying she would soon be under investigation for various things— without naming them— and allies of Trump have fanned rumors about her personal life.

Haley, as Trump’s last opponent for the nomination, has tried to make Trump’s efforts to punish fellow Republicans a central message of her campaign. She has said she represents a different, more unifying kind of politics.

…LaCivita was also behind a recent attack on Good, a congressman from his home state of Virginia, for endorsing DeSantis. Aides were upset by Good’s suggestion that DeSantis had a better chance than Trump of winning a general election.

“Bob Good won’t be electable when we get done with him,” [Trump henchman Chris] LaCivita said in a text message to Cardinal News, a publication that covers politics in southern Virginia.

Such moves have cast a pall over the Republican caucus, quieting public challenges to Trump’s control of the Republican Party. One of the reasons more Senate Republicans have begun endorsing Trump, according to a strategist with knowledge of the talks, is they would prefer to avoid his wrath if he becomes the nominee. Trump’s endorsements in 2022 Senate races were decisive in multiple contested primaries, though several of those candidates later lost the general election.

Late yesterday, Aaron Blake offered 4 takeaways from Trump’s Appeals Court loss in the absurd immunity demand, which he termed “a significant setback.” Next stop, the Trump-infested Supreme Court.

1- The decision was full-throated.

The ruling was decisive and unanimous. Knocking down one bogus claim after another, adding that “there was ‘no functional justification’ for finding Trump immune or giving him a ‘carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count’ and noting that “that Trump’s attempt to cling to power illustrates precisely the kind of case in which such immunity could go so badly wrong.”

2- It used Trump’s own words against him.

3- It hamstrings Trump’s efforts to delay

4- It has implication for a second Trump term

“Trump,” he wrote, “has signaled an intent to pursue a more authoritarian vision in that term, and for now the justice system is signaling that he won’t be able to pursue it unfettered.”

That sounds extremely naive, as though Blake forgot what the meaning of authoritarian is.