833: Come Retribution
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A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. Maybe 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.

Postal 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. I was at Mar-a-Lago. It was a really flat speech. He was, first of all, it was teleprompter Trump. You know, he's reading from the teleprompter. Oh, okay.

There was no fire and brimstone to it. It was kind of warmed over policy proposals. It was flat. But we will bring our supply chains and manufacturing base back home.

People tried to leave the room. I mean, I was there in Mar-a-Lago. I saw people going to the exits halfway through the speech. And at one point, there were so many people leaving that they actually blocked the exits. They told me it was for security reasons. But, you know, I don't think he wanted a half-empty Mar-a-Lago ballroom at the conclusion of his presidential announcement. So, not a great beginning. When did it turn around?

Jonathan says that began with a 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. It's really dark, and it is filled with talk about getting, essentially, revenge at those who have wronged him. Democrat prosecutors, oh, they're after me for so many things. Oh, those prosecutors, prosecutors.

Some are racists. Some hate our country. They all hate me. They'll get me for anything, anything. You put a comma in this paragraph. Why did you do that? I don't really know. This is the famous speech where he said, I am your retribution. In 2016, I declared, I am your voice. Today, I add, I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed...

I am your retribution. I am your retribution. And that line obviously stuck out in the speech itself. But then speaking to Steve Bannon afterwards. Steve Bannon, former Trump advisor, still apparently talks to him. He said that was the pivotal moment in the campaign. The campaign got its mojo and he kept on calling it the come retribution speech afterwards.

Comrade Abishan, Bannon explained to Jonathan, was referenced to a book about a supposed plot by the Confederacy to kidnap and maybe kill Abraham Lincoln.

The plan was codenamed Cum Retribution because it was revenge. I don't think that Bannon's calling for the assassination of Trump's political opponents or anything like that, but he is calling for, and Trump is calling for, an effort to get even with these people, to make them pay for their transgressions, their transgressions being crossing Donald Trump.

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

Waco, Texas. Now, I've been covering presidential campaigns for a long time and presidential announcements that often are weighted in symbolism. You know, Barack Obama in Springfield. He decides to have it in Waco, Texas. Waco, Texas, of course, is the place where the Branch Davidians, David Koresh, had their standoff with federal agents in 1993. Right.

This, of course, ended in disaster. The place went up in flames. 75 people died. It is the symbol for the far right of a government that is out of control and is a threat to its own citizens. So here is the place that Donald Trump goes to have his very first rally. When I asked Bannon about it, I was like, come on, Waco? What's going on here? He said, what do you mean? We are the Trump Davidians.

We laughed, but there was clearly a message being sent. The federal government was out of control. The deep state was out of control when the Branch Davidians were raided and the result was a bloodbath. Once again, they are out of control. This time, they're going after Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters. And what you saw on stage when the rally started, did it seem appropriate to the setting and to that context?

It was so remarkable. And a lot of people, you know, people didn't really note it much because we're early in the presidential campaign cycle. I mean, long before people are actually going to be voting. But it started with Donald Trump coming out on stage silently as the speaker started blaring the national anthem performed by a group called the J6 Choir. The J6 Choir being...

people who are in a DC prison for alleged crimes related to January 6th, allegedly assaulting police officers breaking into the Capitol building. And Trump, as this is playing out, is standing on stage, hand over his heart, and the scenes on the screens behind Trump are the images of the assault on the US Capitol on January 6th. Again, we're in Waco, Texas. One nation,

Under God. 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 speech's sense, he lectured about how the government under Joe Biden is out to get you. The Biden regime's weaponization of law enforcement against their political opponent is something straight out of the...

Stalinist Russian horror show. Let there be no doubt the injustice is being done not only to me but to dozens across our country will not stand and we're not going to stand for it. It's the heart of his speech. It's the core of his message. The government is out of control. It is out to get you. I'm the guy standing in the way.

That's why I'm being prosecuted. Prosecutorial misconduct is their new tool, and they are willing to use it at levels never seen before. The impression that people have is that Trump hasn't changed. Yeah, he's outrageous. Yeah, he does controversial stuff. But that's actually not correct. Trump has changed, at least the message. This is a very different campaign. This is not...

the campaign that got him elected to the White House in 2016. And it's not the campaign that he waged in 2020. This is different. For those who have been wronged and betrayed, of which there are many people out there that have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. We will take care of it. We will take care of it. 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.

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. And I didn't really think about it as a synonym for revenge until we were talking to people who had heard Trump say privately, no, actually, like, there are specific people who we are going to punish for the crime of criticizing Donald Trump. 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 6th 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.

He 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, was 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 sick 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 Arnstorf.

Kelly would just kind of say, yes, sir, and then kind of sit on it until he forgot about it and moved on. Like this is this is not a secret that Trump wanted to use power this way when he was president the first time. But, you know, Jeff Sessions didn't do it. John Kelly didn't do it. And, you know, guess what? They are not going to be there in a second term. Trump has told people that his biggest regret from his first term was appointing people who told him no like that. 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. I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden. Thank you.

And the entire Biden crime family and all others involved with the destruction of our elections, our borders and our country itself. They're destroying our country. And here's number four, the target low level government officials who stopped him in the past. I will totally obliterate the deep state. We will obliterate the deep state. And we know who they are. I know exactly who they are.

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 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.

But then a week ago, of course, he was found guilty on 34 felony counts in New York City and retribution's 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.

If the Democrats are going to play this game, we've got to play the same. We have to play by their rules. Now, when are we going to start arresting Democrats? That's what I want to know. Republican AGs all over the country should pursue their own indictments.

Take corrupt Democrats, put them on trial in front of juries that already hate them before the trial even begins. Those are Todd Starnes on the Truth Network and Matt Walsh, who has nearly 3 million subscribers on YouTube. Here's Donald Trump Jr. If we don't start fighting fire with fire, they're just going to keep doing it. 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. 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 people who have 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. Never did lock up Hillary Clinton. The way to 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. I'm WBEZ Chicago. It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us. Tech One.

Republicans who crossed with 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 diehard Trump loyalist. One of them was a diehard Trump opponent. Elise Spiegel visited with them. 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.

See this lady right here? A 70-ish-year-old woman in a colorful hat passes in front of Stephanie's car. I really want to be her friend. She's always dressed to the nines and goes to all the high school football games, and I just love her. Stephanie moved here from D.C. four years ago. Wow, this is a different scene, huh? It's been a lot to get used to, but, man, I've sure grown to love it. I really have. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

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 6th. 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. P.S., 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. I would always go with them during all the holidays. So I was at Mar-a-Lago with them for Christmas, New Year's, all the way to Easter. So I was just always there.

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 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. I mean, there was the time he felt that he needed to tell me that Stormy Daniels was wrong about his penis size. So that was a really weird conversation. And he called me from Air Force One, which made the whole conversation worse because there's a tiny delay between the person on the plane and the person on the ground. ♪♪

January 6th 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 6th 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. Oh, I knew I would be cast out. I knew I would immediately be a traitor. I mean, I helped do it to people. If anybody spoke out against me,

Mrs. Trump or the president, I was the one issuing terrible, you know, statements, calling them a liar, saying they were looking for fame. 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. I called Mitt Romney a scum, I think.

And this is a man I had worked for and actually had really respected and was always really kind when I ever passed by him. And I remember right when the word scum came out of my mouth, I inside was like, oh, that was way too far, way too far. That was really harsh. And that was pretty gross of me. And of course, I get back to the White House and I got just praise from the president. That was great. You were so tough. You're so tough, you know.

So then that makes you feel good because now the president's happy with you. And that's one of the things about Donald Trump. He doesn't give you a specific direction. He just says, go after him. And he leaves you to do the dirty work. 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 is a person Stephanie liked and respected. He said that I needed to call this reporter and say, General Kelly doesn't understand the genius of our great president. And he said, take it down, take this down. So I remember I wrote it down and I hung up the phone and I sat there and I remember I called my boyfriend.

I called one of the deputy chiefs of staff at the time. And I think I called just like my best friend. And I knew, I was like, oh my gosh, he wants me to say this. This is horrible, right? And everyone was like, yeah, that's really horrible. But I picked up the phone and I did it. And it sounded like I worked for Kim Jong-un, like the genius of our great president. Who says that? But I did. And so...

He called me later that day, the president, and said, hey, that was great. I really appreciate what you said. That was really tough. And I'm thinking, you had me write that down. 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. I remember one specific time when we were in a bilat with President Erdogan of Turkey,

And we were all sitting around this table. I was, I think, maybe the only woman in the room, maybe a couple others. But out of the blue, literally, he just yells down to me, Stephanie, who do you think is the biggest killer? This guy or President Xi of China? He asked me that in a room of 30 to 40 people, I'm supposed to decide who's the biggest murderer, as if that's cool. And I remember I just said, I don't know, this guy looks pretty tough, sir. You know, you laugh about it.

And I remember afterwards he came up to me and grabbed my elbow and he goes, hey, just so you know, it's President Xi. I've seen him do some shit. And that was the moment that I was like, he really loves this. He really loves. He wanted to know who has murdered more of their own people. Their own people. Yeah.

Unfortunately for Stephanie, Donald Trump doesn't usually forget his grudges. And maybe worse, it's not just Donald who's angry with her. The worst part for me is that I'm on her radar. So like a General Kelly is not on Melania Trump's radar. So I've got like both of them. And I know that she is very, very good at revenge as well.

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, Mrs. or even. But she's seen what Melania is capable of. She says Melania has tried to use the government to go after enemies in the past.

She had a friend who kind of worked for her, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who also wrote a book about her while we were in the White House. And when Stephanie's book came out, Melania wanted to sue her because that's what they do. The Trumps sue people. And Melania's reasoning was she wanted to sue Stephanie for violating a nondisclosure agreement that Stephanie had signed. Well, we all signed. But those had been deemed that they didn't really matter because we were for the government.

And Pat Cipollone, our attorney, our White House attorney, kept telling Melania, no, if you want to do this, you need to do it with your personal lawyer. This isn't a government thing. And Melania was like, nope, nope, I want to sue her. I want to sue her. And she forced Pat Cipollone to...

make the Justice Department take it on. Pat said two or three times, this should be your personal lawyer. This is not a government situation. And she finally one day said, I don't care. Do it. And so they did it.

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 Cipollonis, 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. He and she, they both, can call forth these armies of people.

mostly online, but certainly we've seen with January 6th and other situations that some are in public. And you just get besieged with hate and bullying. And they know that. And they wield that power like no problem. And I remember there were times with Mrs. Trump that I'd say, do you want me to put a statement out about, you know, this person who said something bad about you? And she'd say, no, no, no, we will let all my fans get them.

And that meant the people online, you know, all her supporters would go after this person. And they do. 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 magazelots 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 6th 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 months ago, right before bed, he let his dog River out for her bedtime stretch.

You know, open the door, she jumps down three steps, and sitting right here where those garbage cans are was a pickup truck. Sitting there idling, facing my house, and I'm like, okay. I watched him for a second, couldn't see tinted windows, couldn't see what was going on. I'm like, that's strange. You're talking 10 o'clock at night? What got me going was I gave him bug eyes, you know, I looked at him, I gave him stink eyes, like, what are you doing here? Just looked, and you know, he had to know I saw him. And I came back in, they didn't leave, which is really suspicious.

And in your mind, what was the first thought you had about who could be sitting in that truck? Trump supporters. MAGA. MAGA. MAGA extremist, if you will. I'm on the list. I'm on the list. And what do you mean by list? Enemies. I'm on the MAGA enemies list. 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 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. I keep it open. I love the picture of the devil. It's very subtle. There it is.

That's my stepson. That's my dad who's dead. That's my ex-wife's ex-husband. That's my brother. That's my mother. They do have all the email and socials, right? They have all your email. Yeah, but that's not me. I guess as a Fred Wellman, as a realtor, they keep mistaking for me. Poor Fred Wellman. I know. Have you reached out to him and be like, sorry, guy? You should change his name. I was first.

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? So anyway, I do what I do, which is, you know. Just explain what this is. I have a 9mm handgun, Smith & Wesson 9mm. In the drawer by your bed? Yeah. Yeah. Or actually on the nightstand.

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 protege of David Petraeus, surfed 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. Easy access to guns kills veterans. So it was a big deal for me to go ahead and get one. Did you have, is it okay for me to ask, did you at a certain point have real trouble with suicidal ideation? Oh yeah, oh yeah. That was a constant companion to me for many years. Many, many years.

But I went into treatment for PTSD back in 2018 as my wife and I separated. And I took that. And I'm still in therapy, still treating it. I've come a long way. 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 & Wesson, carried it everywhere, even inside his house. I need to have it in the same room.

just to make sure in case somebody kicked the door in or came in the back door that I'd at least be able to fight back. I had a whole plan where I'd fall back, what safe room I set up a safe room. I mean, just put my extra ammo in the bathroom upstairs. So if I had to retreat to the bathroom, I'd have the extra ammo in the bathroom. I mean, it was pretty intense for a while there. Again, I'm an old soldier. I'm not going to sit back and let them kill me. Being aware of my surroundings, being aware of my operational security is my way of life now. It has to be. I have no choice.

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. At the time, did you question, am I being paranoid? Oh, yeah, I always do. You always do. I mean, why wouldn't you? You know, it's a weird thing to think somebody might want to, you know, it's just, it's so ridiculous, the idea. Even somebody who lives this life is wondering, you know, am I just being ridiculous? You know, I always...

Does it bother you to think that you're paranoid? Yeah, it does. But that's their goal, right? I mean, the goal, I think, for all these guys is to make us –

on edge, to wear us out, to make you quit, to say, you know what? This is too much heat. This is too much danger for me. And I have peers who have done that. I have peers who have backed out of their, you know, quieted down or gone to other things. The goal is, and I think about it, why would I not think about it? So they want us to be scared. They want us to chicken out. They want us to be broke. It's like, you see how I live. I live humbly. Go for it, dude. There's nothing more dangerous than a man with zero assets and zero fucks. Yeah.

And that's you? That's me. Oh, yeah, that's me in a million ways. Kids are grown. I'm not married, so my wife's not going to get hit with anything. I'm on my own. 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. Or I don't know if they would have DOJ come after me for, like, treason.

He was big on treason. What do you mean he was big on treason? He would always just, if people spoke out against him, that's treason. That's treason. He just, that's what he felt. It's not going to be just about Donald Trump or Melania Trump. Some people who will also be placed, without a doubt, into the administration, they too will be empowered to go after people they perceive as

were traitors. And so it's going to be a small little army of people that I think will be just settling all kinds of scores using the government. You want to talk about what is what is it going to look like for people like me? Let's say you say you replace half the IRS with MAGA extremists, and they go through people like me's books. You know as well as I do, I probably didn't cross it to your dot on I. It's not hard to find a crime when you look for it.

So what happens to people like me? You see where this goes? It's very easy to use the administrative state in a very deep state, if you will, in very evil ways. Which is why Fred and his girlfriend have been making plans.

Can you just explain the trip that you're going to be taking this summer? Yeah, we're going to go abroad. I've done the research of what needs to do to establish the first steps in the process to find yourself living somewhere else. And we're planning on taking some of those steps this summer just to be safe. You know, establishing bank accounts and travel patterns, making contact with the local passport offices, those sorts of things. There are other ways that Fred has adjusted his life in anticipation of a Trump presidency.

Explain that why. Why are you not married? Well, there's no legal entanglement that way. They can't go after her because she's my partner, my wife. We have not intertwined our finances, for example, just in case. I do not want my challenges to affect those who I love, be it my kids, my partner, even my ex. I do not want them entangled in this. ♪

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 6th committee.

She says that when Trump's poll numbers look especially good, they comfort each other with these half funny, half serious texts. Like our big joke is that we're going to end up in Gitmo. And I'm always telling people, will you just fill my commissary up? I just want, I love ramen. I'll just eat ramen all the time. Do you think that you could end up in jail? Oh, yeah. I don't know for what, but yeah. I mean, I even worry some days about just disappearing one day.

Like a black ops, one day Stephanie's just gone. Where'd she go? That's really dramatic. I doubt that would happen, but it has crossed my mind. Because you think they're capable of that? Yeah. I mean, yes. Stephanie and Fred know that these hypotheticals seem really extreme, but they feel like they have no choice but to think about them. It's messed up that the United States of America in 2024...

Because you have a political difference with someone who ran for office, you actually have to come up with a plan to possibly leave our country. If Donald Trump wins on November 5th, 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 weeks ago, he had another visit from an idling truck.

Lee 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. It's American Life from 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 2 of our program, Act 2, The Deep Stater. So unlike Fred and Stephanie, this next guy is not trying to pick a fight with Donald Trump.

He was just trying to do his job. Mr. Chairman, ranking members, thank you for the opportunity to address the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. 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 Zelensky, back in July 2019. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman wrote the talking points for President Trump that day

Trump was supposed to congratulate Zelensky for winning a big election, normal stuff. But instead, Trump famously went off message and asked Zelensky for a favor. He asked Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden. Vindman and some other officials were listening in. I was concerned by the call. What I heard was inappropriate, and I reported my concerns to Mr. Eisenberg. It is improper for the president of the United States to demand a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen and a political opponent.

In his testimony, Vindman emphasized that he did not go public with these concerns. He reported them up the chain of command as a job required because they had national security implications. He was not hoping to put the president on trial. There was somebody else, an intelligence official, who blew the whistle and made the vote and called 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 was now out of the White House, Vindman was still a military officer. There were 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 U.S. policy in Ukraine, Russia, and former Soviet states, a job at an army museum that had not even opened yet.

which is about as far from the action as you can get. Bim 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. Well, when you walk into our house, you walk into a very empty space. High ceilings, that's why we have the echoes. Literally has only dog beds in it. And we tallied 11 dog beds for three dogs across the house. Yeah.

Yeah, this is a room where there would be living room furniture and curtains and stuff. Yes. We have a plan for all of that, but we are not purchasing the furniture and the curtains, the window treatments, until we have a little bit more clarity on the election in November. Because, you know, I don't know what we're going to do. We don't have plans to leave, but if Donald Trump is re-elected,

That frankly sounds a little bit alarmist. And I understand the idea that we need to save money in general just to make sure that, you know, contingencies. That's fair. Contingencies. Your contingencies are different than my contingencies. I think we have a different calculus for how we sort of calculate the danger. What's interesting talking to the Vindmans is 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, and what he's going to try to do to them. So you have all these people guessing, like the Binomans. 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. You just can't imagine leaving the country. No, not possible. I think the fact is that I've served a full military career to protect this country, and I'm not going to give it up.

He gestures around the living room. Well, I would just say that, you know, Ellie and I, our 13-year-old, have an ulterior motive here. And this is an ideal space to be able to... Can you please be serious? Yes, to be able to play her VR, because there's no impediments, you know, as a virtue. This is not the point of the story, okay? When I asked them each, separately, to explain why they see whatever danger they might be in so differently, they each had the same answer. Temperament. Alex is exceedingly optimistic.

It is a little annoying at times. So I would revert to what my daughter says about us, which is that I'm responsible for fun and Rachel's responsible for safety. Wait, why does it work out that way? You're the military officer. How is she the safety one? Because I'm the fun one. I tend to be pretty optimistic and kind of on the happy-go-lucky side.

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 clowns 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 their troubles with Donald Trump, going all the way back to their very first conversation about the Zelensky 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-Zelensky 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. And we were laying in bed and he said, can you please call and check on professional liability insurance tomorrow? And he rolled over and went to sleep and I was awake all night long. He wanted me 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'd lost their first child. He 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 doxed, 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 Zelensky back in July 2019. I mean, there was something I guess commented on just within the past week where he claimed that it was a perfect phone call. You know, actually, I could pull it up here. Give me a second. OK, this is two days ago.

So this is at his rally just two days ago in Dayton, Ohio, where he was talking about the fact that there was a videotape of the phone call, July 25th phone call. Shifty Adam Schiff. This is one of the most dishonest human beings. He's talking about the Democrat who ran the impeachment hearings, Adam Schiff. He made up my conversation that I had with the president of Ukraine. He made up the conversation. But here's what they didn't know.

The phone call, because it was a White House call and for some reason it happened to be on tape. So I let them go more and more. The stories got wilder and wilder. Then we released the tape.

They died. They didn't know that phone call was taped. And they got caught. 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 this Lenski phone call. The transcript we have comes from staff notes made during the call. So Trump did not release any tape of any sort in Kat Schiff or anybody else in any laws. He talks about these things all the time, like in multiple venues. This was literally two days ago.

And so that tells you you're still on his mind. Yeah, definitely still on his mind. Alex and I talked about it. It was very chilling, I think, that he brought up the phone call. Because you'd like to think he moved on to other people that he hates, Liz Cheney, I don't know, I mean, any number of people. And he does talk about them. But that's still there. And I think he would, you know, absolutely seek retribution. So you'd like to think that we could fly under the radar for a little bit if things got bad, but I'm not so sure. If things did get bad, what do 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 tried 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. Yeah, I don't want to seem like a nut, but if you just Google or just do a search on Twitter or something for, you know, what they want most of all is Alex to be arrested and tried for treason. They truly think that he went against his commander in chief and that is an act of treason. That's what the MAGA people feel. Right, the MAGA's. His most far-fetched fear?

Again, neither of them think these things are likely. I think about the fact that I'm an immigrant and is there any chance that I could lose my citizenship as a naturalized citizen? And then I frankly don't have a country, frankly, because the Soviet Union doesn't exist, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic doesn't exist. So that idea has probably crossed my mind once or twice, you know, that that would be a tougher thing to...

than even some of the prosecutions or something of that nature, that I would lose the fact that I'm an American. 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, but couldn't stand the wrongdoing that he saw built into the system and fled to start again in 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. Alex let his dad know they may be pulled into the upcoming impeachment hearings. And that there was no way for me to avoid being drawn into this situation.

And his counsel was, don't mess around with these people. They could wreck everything for you, you know, derail your career and all that kind of stuff. I was in the car. I was in the very back. And there was a lot of Russian. I understand Russian, but I don't speak it. But I could see them in the front. I mean, Alex's dad was yelling and he was very upset. And his dad was saying, don't testify. Don't testify against the most powerful man in the world. Don't do it.

There's nothing to be gained for it. Don't do it. And he was actually more concerned about like, you know, the Soviet context would be imprisoned, murdered or things of that nature. He thought you could be imprisoned and murdered. Well, I mean, we had lived in the U.S. for 40 years, so he knows the U.S. is different than the Soviet Union. But when you cross power, that kind of unchecked power with that kind of personality, that the consequences would be severe.

His testimony, Bidman 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. And offering public testimony involving the president would surely cost me my life. Dad, I'm sitting here today in the U.S. Capitol talking to our elected professionals. It's proof that you made the right decision 40 years ago to leave the Soviet Union and

Come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry. I will be fine for telling the truth. Alex says that at the time, that really seemed true to him, that he could testify without serious repercussions. But today? I'd say if we go into 2024 with Trump being reelected, I wouldn't have that kind of confidence going forward. I still have a lot of faith in this country, but if we do elect Trump a second time around,

I'm not sure if right would still matter. Act three, four more years. Okay, 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 Chase talked to a bunch of Trump voters before and after the guilty verdicts in his court case a week ago.

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 6th prisoners tribute band. 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. Inflation to go down. Lower inflation. Gas prices. Migrants. The borders closed. 100% economy. I drive a pickup truck and shit's getting expensive for me. Lower...

rent, mortgage, that kind of thing. I have a 28-year-old that's trying to buy a home and we told him not even to bother move out right now. Just to bring things back to a normalcy, to bring fuel prices back, just try to take it back to the way it was, you know, four years ago. 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. Do you think that Trump, like, do you think he's going to go after Stormy Daniels or Michael Cohen, you know, like punish them? No, I don't think so. I don't think he gets two craps.

Really? Even though he likes... No, of course he probably hates them. But no, I think he has more important things to do. Exactly. I think he's going to put it behind him. Yes. Do you think he's going to go after Biden? No, he's not. Biden's an old man. He's not going to live that much longer. I don't see retribution or revenge. He is for the people. He is for helping the people. That's what we need. You know, when Trump started this campaign...

Something that he said was, I am your warrior. I am your justice. Retribution. Retribution. Is the word he used? Yeah. What do you think if like if he does end up using the DOJ to go after his political enemies? That's what they're doing. So now he knows now he knows how to do it, but he won't do that.

To everybody here, retribution isn't some hypothetical future thing to be afraid of. It's already here. It's happening now, under Biden. Biden is the one using his Justice Department to persecute his political opponent. Sticked 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. So they have weaponized the DOJ. Look at Mar-a-Lago, the raid. You're like, the Justice Department is totally politicized. They got to go.

they're using their power and authority, they're abusing their power and authority in order to silence this person because for whatever reason they have so much hatred towards Donald Trump. And it's like, you hate him that much? Would you be comfortable with a president going after his political enemies, like using the DOJ and the... No, no, that's not what it's designed for. No, I wouldn't. I don't think that's what's happening to him. I don't think that's right.

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. Is there something that Trump could do with respect to going after his political enemies that would make you uncomfortable? If he did a witch hunt like we're going through right now. No witch hunt for a witch hunt. Yeah, nope. And what do you want Trump's Justice Department to look like? Well, you know what? I don't know, but maybe it should be...

Maybe it should be non-partisan. It sounds like you don't want the Justice Department to be used by a president to go after their political enemies. And you kind of feel like that's what's happening now. Free Trump! Free Trump! Free Trump! Free Trump! Free Trump! 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?

Do you feel like excited about the idea of revenge or retribution? See, when he's saying, see, Sam and Matt, it's not like revenge that I'm going to go out and kill people or beat people, put them in jail. It's to stop the deep state and stop corruption.

— In a way, you think of it as making things fairer. — Yes. — Not like an eye for an eye. — That's right! — OK, so what would you think, though, if Trump did use the levers of the federal government to go after his political opposition? — He won't. He won't. — Even though he has said he would? — Not in the context that you're saying. — OK. — 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.

Would you be comfortable with Trump using the levers of the federal government against his political enemies? Like, he's talked about going after the Biden crime family, or he's talked about going after the radical AGs, you know, radical prosecutors. Like, would you be comfortable with that coming from him?

No, my preference would be that as soon as Donald Trump is inaugurated as 47th president, that he pardons himself and he pardons Joe Biden. Well, Joe Biden's not on trial right now. No, he's not on trial now, but I would like him to issue a pardon for the crimes that he has done, rather than prosecuting him, so that no one could prosecute him. If Trump becomes president, you just want to move on? Yes.

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. Zoe Chase is the producer on our show. You can't hide. You pretend to start. The path to life.

Thank you.

The people of Together Today's episode include Chris Benderev, Fia Benen, Sean Cole, Michael Kamate, Aviva de Kornfeld, Seth Lin, Catherine Maimondo, Nadia Raymond, Safia Riddle, Ryan Rumery, Alyssa Shipp, Lily Sullivan, Christopher Sertala, Marisa Robertson-Textor, Matt Tierney, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is Sara Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry. ♪

Special thanks today to Mark Zaid, Eugene and Cindy Vindman, Jennifer Jacobson, Jennifer Weaver, James Shirk, Ellen Whitman, Stephen Bradbury, Kelle Fasane, Ryan Godersky, and Sarah Isker. Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnstorf, 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. Torrey Malatia. He is constantly asking me this about the host of The Daily, Michael Barbaro. Who do you think is the biggest killer? This guy or President Xi of China? I'm Eric Glass. Back next week, more stories of This American Life. And more travel help and fires.