Trump's retaliation 'Revenge Tour' has sparked a national emergency: NYT

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks before departing for Scotland, on the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 25, 2025.

President Donald Trump’s second-term revenge campaign, critics warn, is no longer confined to angry posts and political grudges. Instead, Trump is increasingly turning beyond his political foes and deploying the vast power of the federal government against anyone who resists, embarrasses or simply defies him.

New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie argued in a blistering Wednesday column that Trump's ongoing efforts for revenge against his political foes are warping the federal government into an instrument for settling scores.

Bouie cited former officials Trump continues to see as disloyal, including Gen. Mark Milley, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Mark Esper. All of his targets go beyond former aides to include civil servants, prosecutors, judges, Republican impeachment supporters, and even voters who rejected him in 2020. The result has been a White House driven less by a public agenda than by the president’s desire to punish people who defy or embarrass him.

The two best examples come from the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case and the prosecution of David Hearn.

Garcia was deported to the brutal prison in El Salvador despite open legal challenges and against the explicit instruction of the judge to turn the planes around.

Bouie wrote that when Garcia fought his removal and won a unanimous Supreme Court ruling requiring the government to facilitate his return, he became a symbol of resistance. The administration’s criminal case against him, Bouie argued, looked less like ordinary law enforcement than retaliation for successfully challenging Trump’s deportation program. While a judge dismissed the case, the Justice Department is trying to revive it.

"The Ahab-like tenacity of the White House in its pursuit of Abrego Garcia might make sense if he were some criminal mastermind — a danger to the public order. He wasn’t," Bouie said. "He was just an ordinary person, a working member of his community who happened to be an easy target for the president’s deportation machine."

But the administration wanted to make an example of him to other immigrants, warning them to leave the country or suffer. Garcia's win not only threatened Trump's program, but it has also become a symbol of defiance.

"This is why the Trump administration wouldn’t let up," said Bouie. "Trump tried to crush Abrego Garcia, and when he couldn’t, he made it the priority of his government to punish him for his resistance. This was less policymaking than obsession."

Hearn was cycling in bicycle shorts and a jersey when he stopped by the Abraham Lincoln Reflecting Pool to see the "botched" paint job. He dipped his hand in to feel what the new surface was like. Trump's administration slapped him with a felony that could land him in jail for as much as 10 years.

"Unable to take responsibility for his own mistakes and failures, Trump blamed unnamed saboteurs and appears to have ordered the Department of Justice to press charges against them. Enter Hearn, who was accused of pulling off a piece of the pool’s liner" with both hands, after cutting it with a box knife, recalled Bouie.

As Hearn's lawyer, Norm Eisen, has said publicly, the Olympian became a "scapegoat" for Trump's failure and public humiliation. Once the evidence was revealed that Hearn wasn't responsible for any of the damage, the Justice Department was forced to drop the charges.

Bouie noted that Trump is hardly the first president to weaponize the government against his political foes. Richard Nixon used the IRS and the FBI against his enemies. J. Edgar Hoover, former FBI director, was obsessed with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., having him wiretapped and attempting to break up his marriage by sending his wife accusations.

"Both Nixon and Hoover cloaked their abuses of power in the language of necessity and national interest," said Bouie. "They paid lip service to the rules and norms of constitutional government even as they treated them as obstacles to their own power. Committed to vice, they nonetheless feigned tribute to virtue."

Trump isn't doing any of that. He doesn't see himself as the head of one of the three branches of government; he views himself "as the government," wrote Bouie. Trump's goal is "glorification" and a "desperate" attempt to save face. What Bouie is worried about, however, is what happens if Trump is stuck. With Iran, for example, Trump ripped up a nuclear agreement, went to war, and ultimately caused larger problems not only for the U.S. but for the world.

The fear is if Trump realizes he's "caught in a trap of his own making," he will "try to wreck the world" in an effort "to save his fragile sense of self."

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