The GOP fires up its vengeance 2024 tour

In the wake of former President Donald Trump’s felony conviction, the “R” in the Republican brand might just as well stand for revenge.

From Trump on down, members of the GOP are launching furious plans to prosecute Democrats at every turn, especially if the man who lost the White House in 2020 can win it back this fall. Trump nodded to the idea when asked about his conviction, which he has persistently, and with no evidence, blamed on President Joe Biden’s administration.

“It’s a terrible, terrible path that they are leading us to,” Trump said on the conservative channel Newsmax, “and it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them.”

Trump’s allies have taken up that drumbeat with fury.

“I’m quite frankly pissed off,” Texas Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson told Newsmax.

“President Biden should be ready,” Jackson said, “because on January 20 of next year when he’s former President Joe Biden … I’m going to encourage all of my colleagues and everybody that I have any influence over as a member of Congress to aggressively go after the president and his entire family, his entire crime family, for all of the misdeeds that are out there right now.”

Seizing on the special counsel prosecution of Biden’s son Hunter is clearly, for many of them, just a warm up.

Less than a year ago, Trump vowed: “I will appoint a real special ‘prosecutor’ to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the USA, Joe Biden, the entire Biden crime family, & all others involved in the destruction of our elections, borders, & country itself!”

Calls for arrests, jail time and even worse have ricocheted throughout right-wing media with renewed intensity since a New York jury delivered its guilty verdict. Much of it is aimed at Biden, but there is plenty of anger to go around.

Former Trump adviser and far-right firebrand, Steve Bannon, wants Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg jailed, and he suggested to the New York Times that Republican prosecutors coast-to-coast should start building cases against Democrats. “There are dozens of ambitious, backbencher state attorneys general and district attorneys who need to ‘seize the day’ and own this moment in history,” Bannon said.

Bannon faces trial himself this fall after being indicted by Bragg over allegations he defrauded donors through a plan to build a wall along the Mexican border. He has pleaded not guilty.

Another former Trump adviser, Stephen Miller, is sounding the same battle cry.

“Every facet of Republican party politics and power has to be used right now to go toe-to-toe with Marxism and beat these communists!” Miller said on Fox News this week as he ticked through an action agenda. “Is every Republican AG opening investigations into voter fraud, right now? Is every House committee controlled by Republicans using its subpoena power in every way it needs to, right now? Is every Republican DA starting every investigation it needs to, right now?”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has announced a “three-pronged approach” to reining in the US Department of Justice, which has been repeatedly savaged by Trump. Johnson is promising to use appropriations, legislation and oversight to muzzle the department for, as he sees it, undermining American faith in the judicial process. “It’s bigger than just President Trump. It’s bigger than just these cases. It’s about our system itself, and because of that, there is a backlash,” he said.

It all dovetails with a massive plan of action being pushed by the Heritage Foundation should Trump be reelected – a plan that calls for the Department of Justice to be no longer treated as an independent body making decisions based on law. Under Project 2025, as it is called, the DOJ would come under “the direct supervision and control of the President,” who would be free to determine who was charged for what, and to see that cases were “made consistent with the President’s agenda.”

Some top Democrats have long predicted a wave of retribution should Trump win reelection, especially for sharp critics of the now presumptive GOP nominee, journalists who highlight Trump’s lies and misdeeds and for members of the January 6 select committee.

Former congresswoman and the committee’s vice chair Liz Cheney has drawn special attention, with Trump earlier this year posting on his social media platform, “She should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!”

A raging sea of Republicans is now, without doubt, hoping to see that retribution brought to reality.

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