Why Is Trump Doing All This?

“Trump is doing all of this because Trump can.” [UPBEAT CLASSICAL MUSIC] “He wants retribution. He wants revenge.” “There’s no greater crime in Trump’s eyes than opposing Trump.” “When you see him going after law firms, for instance, major law firms that he sees as too close to the Democratic Party or that went after him in investigations or cases during his first term.” “The biggest rejection Trump has ever faced in his entire life was his re-election loss. And a part of me at least thinks that perhaps he’s pursuing retribution against the American people, against the public at large, against the country that did reject him.” “He is driven, I think, by the desire to amass power. All of the politics, all of the belief systems, all of the political stances, all of that is just a convenience for him.” “He now has more power than he’s ever had before, and he’s just pursuing the agenda that he’s promised since the 1980s.” “The assassination attempt, you could really tell that he sort of developed this view of himself as having a special mission. ‘I am the most brilliant, best man in the history of the universe.’” “We are part of a big and complex world, and I think Trump is motivated by a desire to isolate the United States and let it stand in a kind of splendid isolation.” “I think the Trump administration is doing a number of things that it does, in fact, have a mandate to do: substantial restrictions on immigration to seeking some kind of armistice in the Russia-Ukraine war, and asking Europe to bear more of the burden in that conflict. These are things that Trump campaigned on. It’s entirely politically reasonable for them to pursue them. It’s just that in each case, there’s some impulse inside the Trump White House to just go a little further.” “He’s created this environment that, especially on the right, where it is extremely difficult to leave MAGA. You can be ostracized from friendships. You can be ejected from churches. And this is an environment that casts a pall of fear but at the same time makes MAGA extremely difficult to confront.” “This isn’t Richard Nixon, a very psychologically complex man. This is a simple guy pursuing, in a lot of ways, quite simple interests. The issue, the problem, is that he is doing so with the might and power of the United States federal government.”