Trump’s 'Secretary of Retribution' has been appointed: Who is on his list?

Get ready: Trump and his neofascist MAGA movement may soon be coming for you.

They’re already explicitly gunning for journalists like me who write for Raw Story (which, along with The New Republic, Daily Kos, Alternet, Common Dreams and others, regularly publish my articles), CNN, The Washington Post, and Reuters, according to an astonishing new investigative report published yesterday at Raw Story.

Trump’s self-described “Secretary of Retribution,” Ivan Raiklin, already reportedly has a hit list of 350 “deep state” individuals he says they intend to try to assassinate by tricking police into attacking their homes with SWAT teams.

Raiklin posted a video to X, which has now gotten more than 10 million views, saying:

“Expect to see live-streamed swatting raids of every single individual on that Deep State target list, because the precedence has already been set.”

He added:

“Look at my entire Deep State target list. That is the beginning. This is the scratching of the surface of who is going to be criminalized for their treason, okay?”

The list, according to Raw Story investigative reporters Jordan Green and Mark Alesia:

“[I]ncludes numerous Democratic and Republican elected officials; FBI and intelligence officials; members of the House Select January 6 Committee; U.S. Capitol Police officers and civilian employees; witnesses in Trump’s two impeachment trials and the Jan. 6 committee hearings; and journalists from publications ranging from CNN and the Washington Post to Reuters and Raw Story — all considered political enemies of Trump.”

Congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the now-disbanded House Select January 6 Committee, told those reporters their findings are “deadly serious,” adding:

“A retired U.S. military officer has drawn up a ‘Deep State target list’ of public officials he considers traitors, along with our family members and staff. His hit list is a vigilante death warrant for hundreds of Americans and a clear and present danger to the survival of American democracy and freedom.”

In this, official and unofficial members of the MAGA movement appear to be making good on their commitment to remake America in the mold of Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán’s “illiberal democracy.”

When Orbán spoke at CPAC in Budapest two years ago, the Hungarian “soft fascism” strongman president told the audience, to a standing ovation:

“Hungary is actually an incubator where experiments are done on the future of conservative policies. Hungary is the place where we didn’t just talk about defeating the progressives and liberals and causing a conservative Christian political turn, but we actually did it.”

Virtually all of Hungary’s press is now in the hands of oligarchs and corporations loyal to Orbán, with hard-right talk radio and television across the country singing his praises daily. Progressive media is functionally banned. Billboards and social media proclaim Orbán’s patriotism.

He told the American CPAC conference in Budapest last year they should do the same in America when Republicans next seize control of the US government:

“Have your own media,” he said to cheers. “It’s the only way to point out the insanity of the progressive left. The problem is that the western media is adjusted to the leftist viewpoint. Those who taught reporters in universities already had progressive leftist principles.”

He added:

“Of course, the GOP has its media allies but they can’t compete with the mainstream liberal media. My friend Tucker Carlson is the only one who puts himself out there. His show is the most popular. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcasted day and night. Or, as you say, 24/7.”

After his 2022 speech was publicized in the US, many American media outlets were banned from attending CPAC in Budapest. As VICE News reported:

“Besides VICE News, journalists from Rolling Stone, Vox Media, and the New Yorker were turned away from the conference on Thursday, despite repeated assurances from the American Conservative Union that access would be provided. Journalists from other non-Hungarian media outlets, including the Guardian and Associated Press, tweeted that they had also been denied accreditation, despite months of requests.”

But seizing control of the press and intimidating journalists is just the beginning. Reporters and opinion writers are usually among the first who authoritarian leaders like Trump usually target, but in this age of social media everybody is at risk.

It usually starts subtly and is just done by politically friendly oligarchs and their organizations; for example, I’ve had two articles this year, one on the fossil fuel industry and the second this week’s piece on “yellow journalism,” openly censored by a social media site for “violating community standards.” People who tried to repost them were threatened with their accounts being shut down.

Other times it becomes explicit and even violent. As Zach Beauchamp writes for Vox:

“At dawn on a Tuesday in May, the police took a man named András from his home in northeastern Hungary. His alleged crime? Writing a Facebook post that called the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, a ‘dictator.’”

Reuters told the story of Hungarian writer Iren Karman, then 40, who’d written about police corruption and “was pushed into a car while walking home, beaten, and left by the Danube river.” She noted she’s been being followed and her car had been broken into that week.

More recently, Orbán acquired the Pegasus spyware program, which is only sold to governments (it’s used extensively by Putin, and would be readily available to Trump if he takes over the FBI as he has promised), and has turned it against journalists and average Hungarians who dare speak out against his autocracy.

The program gives its owner access to every nook and cranny of your smartphone and is undetectable. Human Rights Watch (HRW) tells the story of investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi who told the organization:

“I lost sources after the Pegasus incident… . It’s harder to work now because people are afraid to talk. This phenomenon has increased now more than before Pegasus. Meeting me comes with its extra risks.”

HRW documents multiple recent instances of Hungarian reporters being stalked, harassed, threatened, and broken financially by prosecution for writing things that aren’t “patriotic.”

Andras Kiraly HRW reports, was approached by a stranger and explicitly threatened if he didn’t drop a story.

Zoltan Varga, who has steadfastly refused to sell or shut down his independent Hungarian website, was stalked for years, his house openly surveilled by menacing looking men, and finally charged with “what he says were politically motivated tax fraud charges brought against him in November 2022.”

HRW’s report documents numerous examples of reporters and dissidents being attacked, arrested, sued, threatened, called traitors or “Soros mercenaries,” and accused of heinous crimes in an effort to discredit them and their work.

Steve Bannon celebrated Orbán as “Trump before Trump,” and Casey Michel on the NBC News site Think noted:

“From targeting migrants to inflaming an ethnonationalist base, from attacking the press to whipping up nativist conspiracies, from ushering in unprecedented corruption to tearing down basic democratic protections, Trumpism is increasingly indistinguishable from Orbánism.”

Earlier this week, Politico ran a story about Orbán endorsing his dear friend Donald Trump for president. And Ohio Republican Senator JD Vance, one of Trump’s top possible VP picks, recently toldFace The Nation: “I do think that he’s made some smart decisions there that we could learn from in the United States.”