In his under-recognised 2007 book Think Big and Kick Ass: In Business and Life, Donald Trump dedicated a chapter to ‘Revenge’. He wrote: ‘My motto is: always get even. When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.’
Vengeance is a lifelong theme in the Donald J. Trump story, narrated as it is by Donald J. Trump. In 1992, he told the interviewer Charlie Rose: ‘I love getting even with people.’ He’s fond of quoting Alfred Hitchcock: ‘Revenge is sweet and not fattening.’ In January this year, after his primary victory in New Hampshire, he reiterated: ‘I don’t get too angry – I get even.’
Trump knows that the presidential election of 2024 could be the most delectable payback of all. Following the humiliation of his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 – a stolen election, he and many others believe – and the exhausting persecution he has suffered ever since at the hands of the US legal system, he senses that Lady Luck, his favourite mistress, is once again bending his way.
He has made ‘Retribution’ the leitmotif of his campaign. ‘In 2016, I declared I am your voice,’ he told the Conservative Political Action Conference. ‘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.’
‘I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution’
It feels so nice he says it twice. That’s the hypnotic and consuming power of Trump’s language. The ‘I’ is ‘you’ – his grievance is your grievance, and vice versa. In our angrily narcissistic age, when everyone feels famous online and thwarted off, the message is almost irresistible.
This week, Trump cleared two more big obstacles blocking his path back to the White House.
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