President Donald Trump's critics are accusing him of transforming government power into an instrument of retaliation, arguing that his administration’s pursuit of “retribution” against perceived enemies signals a departure from legal norms and erodes institutional independence.
In an article for The New Republic published Sunday, Paul Starr, a professor of Sociology at Princeton University, argued that Trump’s focus on revenge is not just a personal obsession but a political strategy rooted in a broader cultural reaction against decades of social change.
"The air is thick with talk of revenge, and it’s not limited to Donald Trump’s personal vendetta against individual enemies like James Comey, Letitia James, and John Bolton," the article read.
Starr wrote that Trump’s call for “retribution” against his enemies and the institutions he claims have “betrayed” his followers reflects a deep current of resentment within American politics.
Trump’s threats and acts of retaliation, Starr said, have helped him consolidate control over the Republican Party and intimidate other institutions.
Starr added that Trump’s appeal to revenge resonates with supporters who feel disempowered by the liberal and progressive movements that reshaped American life since the mid-twentieth century. The social revolutions that advanced racial equality, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and secular values, he argued, disrupted long-standing hierarchies and provoked backlash among those who saw their traditional privileges eroded.
"For years he had been telling his followers that they had been betrayed by the nation’s leaders on diversity policies, trade, immigration, foreign wars, and much else. He would be their instrument for a historic settling of scores," Starr said of Trump.
Trump’s promise of payback, Starr wrote, channels those grievances into a demand for the restoration of lost status and dominance.
Tracing the roots of this backlash, Starr noted that earlier Republican leaders like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan courted conservative resentment but did not seek to overturn liberal reforms entirely.
Nixon’s policies, he observed, often extended the liberal project, while Reagan’s conservatism, though economically transformative, stopped short of a full social counterrevolution.
Starr argued that the decisive shift toward Trump-style politics emerged in the 1990s, when the conservative movement and Republican Party increasingly turned to fear and aggression as organizing principles. In that evolution, he argued, the politics of revenge became central to the identity of the American right.
"There have been other dark times in America’s past and other dangers we have faced and overcome. We need the courage and determination that others before us have shown in leading the country through darkness to the other side," he concluded.