833: Come Retribution

Ira Glass

It may be a little hard to remember now, but when Donald Trump announced he was officially running for president again this time around, he did not seem inevitable-- far from it.

It was a week after the midterm elections where the Trumpiest candidates lost some key races. Polls showed Governor Ron DeSantis beating him for the Republican nomination. He had very few endorsements from other Republican politicians. Jonathan Karl covered Trump's announcement for ABC News, where he's Chief Washington correspondent.

Ira Glass

So, not a great beginning. When did it turn around? Jonathan says that began with the speech that Trump gave a few months later, in March 2023, at the annual CPAC conference of conservatives. It was a very different speech with a very different tone.

Ira Glass

Steve Bannon, former Trump advisor, still apparently talks to him.

Ira Glass

Come Retribution, Bannon explained to Jonathan, was reference to a book about a supposed plot by the Confederacy to kidnap and maybe kill Abraham Lincoln. The plan was code named Come Retribution because it was revenge.

Ira Glass

Weeks after that speech, former President Trump held his very first official campaign rally for the new campaign-- kind of a big moment. It was not in a swing state or any place that he needed to pick up votes. The location he chose-- Waco, Texas.

Ira Glass

This, of course, ended in disaster. The place went up in flames. 75 people died.

Ira Glass

Donald Trump spoke for an hour and a half, and most of it was the kind of stuff you'd expect-- how Joe Biden's running down the country, how great things were when Trump was president. He talked about inflation and China and the fake news media. But over and over, through the speech, and in his speeches since, he lectured about how the government under Joe Biden is out to get you.

Ira Glass

This is something that Jonathan thinks lots of people might not have noticed until lately, the degree to which Donald Trump's campaign this time around is about getting back at his enemies. Jonathan tries to capture this in his book about Trump, Tired of Winning, which is actually the inspiration for today's show.

And what exactly might Donald Trump's revenge look like if he got back into office? Well, in some ways, it's still hard to say. Here's the best information out there on this.

Number one on his agenda, for a long time, seemed to be that he was going to go after other Republicans, specifically people who had been his allies and turned against him. That's who he seemed to be the most angry about. And we know this because people close to Trump told reporters like Isaac Arnsdorf from The Washington Post that this is who he talked about going after. Isaac heard the retribution speech.

Ira Glass

People like his former Attorney General Bill Barr, who called Trump's idea that the election was stolen "total nonsense." Or the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley; they had a falling out. In public, Trump talks about locking up Republicans like Liz Cheney, the top Republican in the January 6 hearings.

And how could he do this? Well, the second thing that we know about Donald Trump's retribution is that he's probably going to use the Department of Justice to go after his enemies if he takes the White House again, and other parts of government as well. He tells people that's what he wants to do.

And also, people from his first administration have come forward, talked about how he wanted to do that during his first term in office, but he was stopped. Trump's former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is quoted in the Mueller report, saying that Trump asked him to authorize an investigation into Hillary Clinton.

His former Chief of Staff John Kelly told The New York Times about how, during his first term, Trump asked him to sic the IRS on former FBI director James Comey. He told The Washington Post that Trump would often suggest using the Department of Justice or the FBI to prosecute his political enemies. Again, The Washington Post's Isaac Arnsdorf.

Ira Glass

Trump has told people that his biggest regret from his first term was appointing people who told him no like that. And he's not going to do it again. And the truth is, there's no law to stop any president from using the Department of Justice to go after people this way. It's just tradition. Which brings me to number three, Democrats. I know; this one's not a surprise.

Ira Glass

And here's number four-- he'll target low-level government officials who stopped him in the past.

Ira Glass

He tried to accomplish that in the last months of his first term by changing the rules with an executive order so that he could fire civil servants who didn't do what he wanted. When Joe Biden took office, Biden reversed that policy to what it was. But it's been reported that Trump loyalists are planning to bring it back.

There's one more thing to keep in mind, as we contemplate what retribution might mean in a second Trump term. And that's how Donald Trump and his allies see the powers of the president. Trump's lawyers have been arguing lately in the Supreme Court, in the Georgia vote fraud case, that the president has enormous latitude to use the arms of government to do whatever he wants, much greater latitude than previous presidents have taken.

Trump's lawyers told the Supreme Court that if the president ordered the military to kill a political opponent-- in their view, he could not be prosecuted for that as a crime. The only people who could do anything about it is Congress, and the only thing they can do is impeach him.

Over the past year, Donald Trump has gone through periods where he really was not talking about retaliation that much. Then a week ago, of course, he was found guilty on 34 felony counts in New York City, and retribution is back in force. Only now, he's been joined by an army of furious right-wing commentators and politicians who are demanding prosecutions of Democrats in retaliation for Trump's court cases.

Ira Glass

Those were Todd Starnes on the Truth Network and Matt Walsh, who has nearly 3 million subscribers on YouTube. Here's Donald Trump, Jr.

(SUBJECT) DONALD TRUMP, JR: If we don't start fighting fire with fire, they're just going to keep doing it. And they'll take their wins, and they'll laugh. And when we do it back, they'll say, you're threatening democracy. It's like, wait, you're the ones literally trying to jail your political opposition.

Ira Glass

So, what we have this year is an unusual candidate who is promising something we have not seen in a presidential candidate before, that once he gets into office, he's going to take retribution on those who have opposed him. And he's telling us that he believes he has broad powers to command the Justice Department and other branches of government to help him do that.

We wanted to take an hour to think about what that might look like and what it might mean for the people who are going to be most affected by it, and that is the people who've crossed him in the past, people on his enemies list. How seriously are they taking this? After all, Donald Trump says a lot of shit that he never really delivers on. He never fully built that wall with Mexico. Mexico did not pay for any of it. He never did lock up Hillary Clinton, though he did try.

As I speak these words, Trump is leading in three of the six swing states, tied in the other three. Today we visit with a few of the people that Trump hates as they try to puzzle out what Trump might do to them. How do you plan for this? We get a variety of answers. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, Republicans Who Crossed Trump. So we're going to start today with two Republicans who are both pretty worried about what Donald Trump might do to them if he returns to office. One of them was a die-hard Trump loyalist. One of them was a die-hard Trump opponent. Alix Spiegel visited with them.

Alix Spiegel

Plainville, Kansas, is a small town, less than 2,000 people, the kind of place that feels very far away from the rest of the world, from its noise and its concerns and its dangers, which I think is part of what attracted Stephanie Grisham to the area.

Alix Spiegel

A 70-ish year old woman in a colorful hat passes in front of Stephanie's car.

Alix Spiegel

Stephanie moved here from DC four years ago.

Alix Spiegel

Stephanie's previous scene was the White House. She was one of the Trump staffers who lasted the longest. She went to a Trump rally two weeks after his descent on the golden escalator and was amazed by how he connected with the crowd. She'd never seen anything like it. So she signed up and lasted all the way until the storming of the Capitol on January 6.

I was interested in talking with Stephanie because when she was with the Trumps, it was actually part of her job to help them take retribution against their enemies.

Stephanie played a variety of roles for the Trumps. She was Melania's Chief of Staff for a time, but she also worked at the highest levels of the West Wing. In fact, at one point she was Press Secretary and Director of Communications for the White House and was also responsible for communications for Melania. PS, she was the only White House Press Secretary to never hold a single press briefing.

But Stephanie says even outside of her formal White House jobs, she spent a huge amount of time with the Trumps.

Alix Spiegel

Always there-- so literally in the room at so many critical moments. Like on election night in 2020, it was Stephanie who tiptoed into the First Lady's bedroom around 1:00 to wake her, so Melania would be dressed and ready to go on camera when Trump came out to speak.

As Melania got ready in the bathroom, Stephanie says that she sat with Barron at the end of her bed, watching television news and calling out the results so Melania would know which states had been decided. Really, Stephanie's been through all kinds of things with the Trumps.

Alix Spiegel

January 6 was the turning point for Stephanie. She says she was horrified that Trump didn't immediately denounce the breach of the Capitol and attacks on Mike Pence. And when she reached out to Melania to ask her to intervene with her husband, Melania said no. For Stephanie, that was the last straw. She told me she sent her resignation email about 15 minutes later.

But Stephanie didn't stop at resigning. She also agreed to testify for the January 6 Committee, spoke out against Donald Trump on television, and wrote a tell-all book about her experience with the Trumps that became a national bestseller. From a Trump perspective, Stephanie says she's sinned in almost every possible way she could sin. And she's been clear from the beginning, literally from the moment she pressed send on her resignation email, about what that would mean for her.

Alix Spiegel

Stephanie says that since she was a Trump true believer, she mostly felt fine about this. She saw it as an important part of her job to push back. But still, she says, there were some uncomfortable moments.

Alix Spiegel

Stephanie says one of the only times Trump gave her very specific directions was after John Kelly stepped down as Chief of Staff and then criticized Trump in the press. Stephanie says at one point Trump called her to say she needed to make a public statement savaging Kelly, who was a person Stephanie liked and respected.

Alix Spiegel

It was just very, very clear, Stephanie says, that Trump wanted you to be as ruthless as possible with his enemies. She says Trump seemed to genuinely admire people who were ruthless.

Alix Spiegel

Unfortunately for Stephanie, Donald Trump doesn't usually forget his grudges. And maybe worse, it's not just Donald who's angry with her.

Alix Spiegel

Now, I want to be clear. Stephanie seems to genuinely care for and, in some ways, even admire Melania Trump. Since she was Melania's Chief of Staff and Communications Director, they got to know each other pretty well. And you can tell when you read Stephanie's book that even now, she has fond feelings for her former boss, misses her even. But she's seen what Melania's capable of. She says Melania has tried to use the government to go after enemies in the past.

Alix Spiegel

I reached out to Pat Cipollone and the Justice Department to confirm Stephanie's story. Neither would comment. The Justice Department did file a suit against Stephanie Winston Wolkoff shortly after her book came out. The Biden administration dropped that suit its first month in office.

But this story points to something that really worries Stephanie about a second Trump term. She believes there will be many fewer Pat Cipollines-- people willing to push back or say no to the Trumps-- because, like Ira mentioned earlier, Trump has told people he's not going to appoint anyone this time around who will tell him no.

And there's something else that Stephanie is worried about in a second Trump term, something I heard from a few people. It's not how he'd use government institutions for personal retribution. It's another weapon at his disposal.

Alix Spiegel

Several people I spoke to for this story told me that they feared Trump would encourage a kind of culture of vengefulness in his second term, and that MAGA zealots might feel liberated to do what they want because Trump's government will have their backs. After all, he has already promised to pardon the January 6 rioters, which brings me to Fred Wellman and the way that fear of retribution from Trump supporters can infect a life.

Fred lives in a suburb of St. Louis on this residential street with modest houses. And he told me that a couple of months ago, right before bed, he let his dog River out for her bedtime stretch.

Alix Spiegel

To be clear, it's not a literal list, but Fred's definitely done enough to get on the wrong side of Trump world. Fred was executive director of the Lincoln Project. Maybe you've heard of it-- it's this group of high-profile Republican operatives who set out to use their political know-how to keep Trump out of power in 2020 and immediately attracted attention and money.

The group trolled Trump on Twitter daily and spent close to $80 million on a series of viral anti-Trump campaign ads. Trump responded with rage tweets; there were a bunch. And those written attacks from Trump almost immediately translated into actual attacks from Trump supporters.

One Lincoln Project founder I talked to said that hundreds of boxes of excrement were mailed to his house. Then, a couple of months ago, Fred discovered that all of his information and the information of his family members had been posted on this doxing site that he didn't want to name but which he showed me during our visit.

Alix Spiegel

At the top of the page was a box which listed how many people had searched for Fred's name. There were 187. And now this truck was sitting near his driveway. Could it be a Trump supporter?

Alix Spiegel

Before getting sideways with Trump world, Fred didn't keep guns in his house, much less on his bedside table. It's not that Fred's uncomfortable with guns. Fred's military. He went to West Point, was a protégé of David Petraeus, served in Desert Storm, and had three combat tours in Iraq.

It's just that after his time in the military, Fred struggled very seriously with PTSD. And so to be safe, about seven years ago, he got rid of all of his weapons. He told me it was the responsible thing to do for his kids, for his family.

Alix Spiegel

That's why Fred swore off guns, at least until he was promoted to executive director of the Lincoln Project in 2021. MAGA supporters already hated them, but on his first day on the job, something happened that unleashed a whole new level of fury at the group. One of the Lincoln Project's founders admitted to sending sexually suggestive messages to young men, which turned MAGA's anger at the group up to 11.

The daily barrage was so extreme the professional security consultants hired to do a threat analysis told Fred and his colleagues to avoid going outside. Fred felt he had no choice. He says he drove to a store and purchased the Smith and Wesson, carried it everywhere, even inside his house.

Alix Spiegel

Which brings me back to that night in late January and the truck parked in front of Fred's driveway. Fred told me he peeked through the blinds with the gun in his hand waiting, until eventually it drove away.

Alix Spiegel

Fred and Stephanie both worry that in a second Trump term, he'll install people in the federal government who will come after them-- in the IRS, in the Justice Department. Like, for example, they both think their taxes could be audited.

Alix Spiegel

Which is why Fred and his girlfriend have been making plans.

Alix Spiegel

There are other ways that Fred has adjusted his life in anticipation of a Trump presidency.

Alix Spiegel

As for Stephanie, she doesn't like to talk about what she'll do if Trump gets elected for a second term. The only thing she'd say on the record is that she has also considered leaving the country.

In fact, Stephanie told me she's in this text group with four women, former Trump administration staffers who have publicly repudiated him. All of them testified in front of the January 6 Committee. She says that when Trump's poll numbers look especially good, they comfort each other with these half-funny, half-serious texts.

Alix Spiegel

Stephanie and Fred know that these hypotheticals seem really extreme, but they feel like they have no choice but to think about them.

Alix Spiegel

If Donald Trump wins on November 5, Fred and Stephanie will have roughly two months before the new administration takes power to figure out what to do, two months to make a decision about whether to stay or whether to go. In the meantime, they wait. Fred told me that a couple of weeks ago he had another visit from an idling truck.

Ira Glass

Alix Spiegel is one of the producers of our show.

Coming up, how's the plan for retribution affecting your marriage? And do Trump voters actually give a damn about Trump's calls for retribution? That's in a minute, Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program, Come Retribution. One of the current presidential candidates is openly promising revenge if he takes office. We're looking at what that might mean and talking to some of the people he might take revenge upon.

We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, The Deep Stater. So like Fred and Stephanie, this next guy is not trying to pick a fight with Donald Trump. He's just trying to do his job.

Ira Glass

This is former Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman. He's the White House staffer who went to his superiors and officially reported the phone call that President Donald Trump had that led to his first impeachment trial.

You remember this call? It was with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, back in July 2019. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman wrote the talking points for President Trump that day. Trump was supposed to congratulate Zelenskyy for winning a big election-- normal stuff. But instead, Trump famously went off message and asked Zelenskyy for a favor. He asked Zelenskyy to investigate Hunter Biden. Vindman and some other officials were listening in.

Ira Glass

In his testimony, Vindman emphasized that he did not go public with these concerns, but reported them up the chain of command, as his job required, because they had national security implications. He was not hoping to put the President on a trial. There was somebody else, an intelligence official, who blew the whistle and made the phone call public.

But it was Vindman who became the public face of all this, who testified in public at the impeachment hearings, wearing his medals and his uniform, and was probably the most dramatic testimony of the hearings. And there were consequences to that. Two days after Donald Trump beat the impeachment charges, he fired Vindman from his White House job. One of Trump's advisors told CNN that this was meant to send a message to anybody who might cross Trump.

Though he is now out of the White House, Vindman was still a military officer, but apparently too hot a property for the military to give a serious job to. They offered this combat veteran, a multilingual expert who'd been coordinating all US policy on Ukraine, Russia, and former Soviet states, a job at an army museum that had not even opened yet. This is about as far from the action as you can get.

Vindman decided to leave the military, start a new life. He moved with his wife, Rachel, and his daughter to Florida, to a big, pretty house with huge windows.

Ira Glass

What's interesting talking to the Vindmans is that they do not agree on the danger they're in. It really drives home how nobody knows what Donald Trump's retribution is going to look like, who he's going to go after, or what he's going to try to do to them. So you have all these people guessing, like the Vindmans. Rachel's best guess is that they really might need to leave the country. Things might get that bad for them.

Alex just doesn't see it. This is the country that gave his family refuge from authoritarianism. He arrived here at the age of four, after his dad fled the Soviet Union.

Ira Glass

He gestures around the living room.

Ira Glass

When I ask them each, separately, to explain why they see whatever danger they might be in so differently, they each had the same answer-- temperament.

Ira Glass

In person, at home, Alex Vindman is more boyish and funnier than the decorated officer you might have seen on TV, if you watched any of his congressional testimony. He's the one who will clown around for long stretches with the little nephews and nieces at the pool, doing cannonballs and riling them up. He's the one who thinks things will work out.

She's the one who takes a grimmer view of their prospects. And that's how it's been from the beginning of the troubles with Donald Trump, going all the way back to the very first conversation about the Zelenskyy phone call and what it might mean for their family.

That first conversation, they both say, happened when the news broke about that phone call. Rachel heard a story about the Trump-Zelenskyy call on NPR. And then that night, Alex brought it up with her, this thing in the news that obviously was something very close to his own job.

Ira Glass

He wanted her to check on buying professional liability insurance to cover legal fees. The Vindmans were a couple who had to figure out how to deal with other hard stuff before this-- tough overseas postings, including three years in Moscow. They lost their first child, who was born four months early and died a week later. But this was something without any normal rulebook, testifying against a sitting president.

And the way they dealt with the blowback seems to be they got very practical, tried to assess the risks and their options as clearly as they could. After Alex testified, he got called a traitor, a double agent who was working for Ukraine. They got doxxed, threatened, menacing letters were sent to their house, anti-Semitic slurs. It was frightening.

But they were pragmatic about it-- got the Army to do a threat assessment, made arrangements to move to a military base if things got too severe. And this past year, they kept that risk assessment going, keeping an eye on the things that Donald Trump's been saying about retribution. When he's talking a lot about putting his enemies in jail, they did feel like, oh, that's us. And Alex's hackles raise any time Trump talks about the impeachment hoax or the phone call that he had with Zelenskyy back in July 2019.

Ira Glass

He's talking about the Democrat who ran the impeachment hearings, Adam Schiff.

Ira Glass

Just in case there's any ambiguity in your mind right now, none of this is true. It's complete fantasy. There is no tape of the Zelenskyy phone call. The transcript we have comes from staff notes made during the call. So Trump did not release any tape of any sort and catch Schiff or anybody else in any lies.

Ira Glass

If things did get bad, what did the Vindmans think retribution for them might look like from Donald Trump or the people around him? I asked them to rank from most likely to least likely. At the top of the list was some of the stuff other people told us. They'd try to take Alex's pension or entitlements, or maybe the president would direct the Department of Justice or the FBI to investigate Alex, and he'd have to hire a lawyer, which is a huge hassle, even if no conviction came from it.

When I asked them about their most far-fetched fears, Rachel said she was hesitant to mention this next one because it's so out there. But she worries that Alex would be tried for treason, and the penalty could be death.

Ira Glass

His most far-fetched fear? Again, neither of them think these things are likely.

Ira Glass

I don't want to read too much into this, but her worst fear is that he'd die, and his worst fear is not that he'd die, but that he would lose his country.

Back in the impeachment hearings, Vindman ended his prepared testimony by talking about his father, who he looks up to and who he's turned to for advice his whole life. His dad was a civil engineer, who had risen through the ranks and prospered in the old Soviet Union, couldn't stand the wrongdoing that he saw built into the system, and fled to start again at the bottom in America, at the age of 47.

Not long before Alex testified in Congress, they were driving to a family wedding in Rhode Island, and Alex let his dad know that he might be pulled into the upcoming impeachment hearings

Ira Glass

At his testimony, Vindman nodded to that disagreement with his dad, talked about how in many countries, including Russia, raising concerns about the president's phone call, even privately in the chain of command, would have severe repercussions.

Ira Glass

Alex says that at the time that really seemed true to him, that he could testify without serious repercussions. But today?

Ira Glass

Act Three, Four More Years. OK, so we've heard from a bunch of people who are dreading a second Trump term. What about the people who are excited about Trump winning, who've been gearing up for it? We wondered, is Donald Trump's desire for revenge something they share? Is this part of his pitch something they actually care about? Zoe Chace talked to a bunch of Trump voters before and after the guilty verdicts in his court case a week ago.

Zoe Chace

The first group of voters I talked to, they were at a Trump rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, literally on the boardwalk with arcade games. And today, a Justice for January 6 Prisoners tribute band.

[BAND PLAYING "WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT"]

The line to get into the rally was on the beach, in the sand. The mood was upbeat. The music was classic. The vibe was relaxed and sunny, lots of families. I started talking to people, asking everyone, what are the top things you want from Trump if he's back in office, curious if they'd say revenge.

Zoe Chace

Notice what never came up-- retribution. This is very obviously not a scientific sample, but still, out of about two dozen people, none of them mentioned it. I even brought up specific people who crossed Trump, like testified against him in the New York trial. And people were like, eh, I don't know.

Zoe Chace

To everybody here, retribution isn't some hypothetical future thing to be afraid of. It's already here. It's happening now, under Biden. And Biden is the one using his Justice Department to persecute his political opponent. Six special prosecutors on him, sent the FBI to raid his house. There's no evidence any of that's true. These are all independent investigations, but people believe it.

Zoe Chace

This brings me to something I want to draw your attention to, something very different from most of what you've heard this hour. A significant number of people in my unscientific sample told me they don't want Trump or anyone else to use the powers of the federal government to take down their political opponents. They want things the way they used to be. They want things back to normal.

Zoe Chace

You know what looked extra bad to Trump supporters? Trump getting convicted of 34 felonies in the middle of Manhattan by a bunch of people who probably didn't vote for him.

I ran over to Trump Tower the day after the verdict, where supporters were gathering to hear Trump speak, wondering if I was going to hear anything different at this fever pitch moment. I was mushed up against the glass of the Prada store with a bunch of people, asking, what about now, post-verdict? Should Trump use the government to punish his enemies at this point?

That guy was from the Bronx, but another guy I met had flown in from Indiana to support Trump during the trial. That's passion.

Zoe Chace

Retribution doesn't seem to be motivating these Trump voters as much as it's motivating Trump himself. But if it's not turning them away-- it sure doesn't seem to be-- then he has a good chance of getting into the White House. If he gets there, it won't really matter what was driving the voters. He'll be able to do whatever he wants.

Ira Glass

Zoe Chace is a producer on our show.

Ira Glass

Today's program was produced by Alix Spiegel and edited by Alix and me and Laura Starcheski and Bethel Habte. The people who put together today's episode include Chris Benderev, Phia Bennin, Sean Cole, Michael Comite, Aviva DeKorenfeld, Seth Lind, Katherine Rae Mondo, Nadia Reiman, Safiyah Riddle, Ryan Rumery, Alissa Shipp, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Marisa Robertson-Textor, Matt Tierney, and Diane Wu. Our Managing Editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our Senior Editor is David Kestenbaum. Our Executive Editor is Emanuele Berry.

Special thanks today to Mark Zaid, Eugene and Cindy Vindman, Jennifer Jacobsen, Jennifer Weaver, James Sherk, Ellen Wittman, Stephen Bradbury, Kelefa Sanneh, Ryan Gidursky, and Sarah Isghur. Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnsdorf, who you heard at the top of the show, wrote a great book about Trump's followers called Finish What We Started.

Our website, thisamericanlife.org. If you are needing something to listen to, you don't know what to do while you're doing a thing, you can stream our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He is constantly asking me this about the host of The Daily, Michael Barbaro.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.