At September’s rally-scale memorial for Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump rejected the assassinated Christian nationalist’s spirit of forgiveness. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie,” Trump confessed. “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them. I’m sorry.” With the exception of that apology, few doubted that he was speaking from the heart.
Almost a year after Trump’s election victory — decades if measured by the scale of all that has happened since — America’s president is deep in the throes of what one former aide calls his “revenge tour”. To the world, Trump has sent mixed signals. One moment he is pulling off a dramatic ceasefire in Gaza and agitating for the Nobel Peace Prize; the next he is vaporising unidentified boats in the Caribbean and musing about annexing neighbouring countries’ territory. At home, however, his direction has all been one way.
Days after Kirk’s service, Trump told a gathering of about 800 of America’s top generals, admirals and other senior military leaders in Quantico, Virginia, that their priority was to fight “the enemy from within”. In recent weeks, federal prosecutors have indicted the former FBI director James Comey, New York state’s attorney-general Letitia James, and John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser. Each is charged with imprisonable offences — carrying up to 180 years of jail time in Bolton’s case. Trump has also called for the arrest or jailing of two Democratic governors, a large city mayor, a serving US senator, senior retired generals, a former CIA chief and many other named officials.