A Second Trump Presidency Would Be ‘A Campaign Of Revenge And Retribution’

ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl said Donald Trump plans a “very radical Trump presidency, much more so than even the first one” should he win the Republican nomination and go on to beat Joe Biden in the 2024 election. “I don’t think voters have come to terms with what he is talking about doing,” Karl said Monday on ABC’s Good Morning America. “He is talking about a campaign of revenge and retribution.”

“There was a fascinating story that is consistent with my reporting in The Washington Post talking about how he wants to go out and prosecute his political opponents, not just Democrats, but people that served him,” Karl told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “John Kelly, his former chief of staff; Mattis, his former Defense Secretary; Bill Barr, his former attorney general. Are voters really ready to sign up for that?”

“He’s talking about invoking the Insurrection Act on day one, using American troops on the streets of U.S. cities, something he tried to do when he was president last time but was stopped by his own people,” Karl said. “This would be a very radical Trump presidency, much more so than even the first one.”

Karl points to a speech Trump gave back in March, when he told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that “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.’”

In the CPAC speech, Trump went on to promise supporters that when he returns to the Oval Office, he would “totally obliterate” the so-called ‘Deep State.’

Trump’s language has taken on heightened attention following a New York Times poll published Sunday that found Trump leading President Biden in five of the six most important battleground states—beating the president by margins of four to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. President Biden held a lead, by two percentage points, in Wisconsin.

On Good Morning America, Karl said “this is a wake-up call. This is frightening for not just the Biden White House, not just for Democrats, but for anybody who fears what a return to a Trump presidency would mean. He can win. The New York Times poll is not the first one to say this. He can win.”