Reward Friends, Punish Enemies

A few months ago on X, I mused (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that I was worried that if Trump won, he would concentrate on making good policy rather than ruthlessly crushing his enemies. I say that it was somewhat tongue-in-cheek because of course I would like the administration to develop good policies, policies that several of my colleagues have outlined in their contributions to this symposium. But I was not joking in the sense that if Trump does not concentrate first and foremost on destroying the people who tried (and failed) to destroy him, his presidency is unlikely to be a long-term success.

In other words, Trump must not be afraid to do at least some of the terrible things that demented liberals have been shrieking that he would do if elected. Fortunately, if this program is carried out strategically, not with anger but with purpose, “revenge” can also be a good vehicle for public policy.

Trump is somewhat unlikely to do this, because beneath the entertaining bluster and occasional verbal threats of retribution, he is quite politically moderate on most issues. He’s an enormously skilled people person who understands the give and take of politics and business. And Trump cares, at least residually, about what the political and media establishments think of him (though this habit has been eroded tremendously by the last decade of continuous mistreatment).

But if Trump does emerge victorious, he cannot simply return to some sort of status quo ante—a sort of “let bygones be bygones” for the people who tried to ruin his life and whose reckless and irresponsible rhetoric against him threatened his very life as well as the life and legitimacy of our democratic system. The Left has broken every rule of American political behavior in their almost decade-long campaign against Trump. If at the moment of Trump’s triumph they understand that they will avoid any long-term consequences for their actions, a second Trump administration will be fatally hamstrung.

Let’s review the history: The Left has jailed, on preposterous pretexts, senior Trump advisors Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, not to mention hundreds of non-violent January 6 protesters (while thousands of Black Lives Matter rioters went scot-free), all the while claiming to be panicked about the possibility that Trump might violate the rule of law they have spent the last decade shredding.

Beyond that they have engaged in lawfare against Rudy Giuliani, my Claremont colleague John Eastman, my friend Jeff Clark, and many other attorneys whose only “crime” was to represent President Trump as their client. And most importantly, they have politically prosecuted President Trump himself, charging him with “crimes” that would never have been remotely contemplated had Trump not been the leader of the political opposition.

The leaders of these prosecutions must themselves be prosecuted. Those who attempted to ruin Trump’s life through their own illegal and immoral conduct must themselves face ruin.

The media has libeled Trump endlessly, and tech giants have ruthlessly turned their platforms against him, at times shutting him off entirely from communicating with his supporters. There must be consequences for that behavior. The dangerous Big Tech monopolies must be broken up so that their power is diminished, a position which, ironically, is shared to some degree by Lina Khan, the chair of Biden’s Federal Trade Commission. This is good policy, but also good politics.

Meanwhile, at the border, Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas have not just looked the other way, but have actively enabled illegal aliens to invade America. There must be consequences, including prosecutions of people at the highest levels of the Biden-Harris Administration. NGOs must have their funding frozen, and to the extent they have been found to have engaged in corrupt practices, RICO prosecutions of the heads of “resettlement” NGOs should be on the table.

There are many other opportunities to match political retribution with optimal policy. So, yes, as Trump supporter and Silicon Valley Investor David Sacks argues, “The major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) operate on free licenses of public spectrum in exchange for requirements to serve the public interest. They no longer do, and this is an obsolete model anyway. The spectrum should be auctioned off, with the proceeds used to pay down the national debt.” Sacks discusses how this could unleash innovation at scale, and it doubtless would. But it would also send a powerful message to other entities feeding at the public trough under both parties while being fully allied with the most rabidly partisan Democrats.

The list of violators, even within the government and allied systems, are endless. Trump must declare war on the university system that plunges young Americans into endless debt. The intelligence agencies, and the administrative state that thwarted him, must be ruthlessly purged of their corrupt and compromised leadership. This is not because Trump seeks to have agencies with leadership “only loyal to him” and not to America as breathless Democratic politicians insist—but because the incumbents are only loyal to thwarting him, not to serving America. The only positive side effect of the Left’s ruthless domination of almost every significant institution in our society is that everywhere we look, there is a noxious dragon to slay.

Trump must not make the mistake of simply going after institutions. As Saul Alinsky says in Rules for Radicals, “People hurt faster than institutions.” The 51 intelligence operatives who said the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation—even when the FBI knew it was legitimate—not only need to lose their security clearances on day one: they need to be subject to criminal prosecution for election interference and other crimes.

We must prosecute a number of our political enemies NOT because they have different political views (something that should be protected in any democracy) or because they are our political opponents, but because they committed serious crimes and badly damaged the trust in our American political system. That trust can only be restored when the malefactors are punished.

But Trump cannot limit himself to punishing enemies. He must reward his friends as well.

Elon Musk, the greatest entrepreneur of my lifetime, has risked enormous prestige and given enormous resources, both financial and otherwise, in support of Trump and the GOP. There are easy things we can do to reward him and help America at the same time.

The government has totally failed to connect anyone to the internet despite its $42 billion rural broadband effort. Elon Musk has already shown he can connect people all over the world for a fraction of that cost. In the name of both saving taxpayers billions and providing a superior product, Trump’s administration should ruthlessly cut red tape to make sure Musk is able to complete that task. And they should also work to make Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) idea a reality, with hopes that he could make similar staff cuts in the federal government as he did at X (albeit on a more modest scale), which unleashed innovation.

The EPA has used NEPA and other laws to cause tremendous impediments to Musk’s space launches. He described having to convince federal bureaucrats that one of its rockets would not have a high risk of hitting a whale after re-entry. Going after the useless policies and bureaucrats that enable this type of thinking would be good for Musk and good for America.

And there are other friends who must also not be forgotten. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who broke with a lifetime of family political tradition after backing Trump, must be rewarded by seeing meaningful parts of his Make America Healthy Again agenda enacted. This is not in service of some sort of quid pro quo, but a combination of good politics and good governance.

All of the above are just sketches. The lists of friends to reward and enemies to punish are far longer than can be put in a single article. And how Trump and his team choose to do this must ultimately be aligned with both American laws and America’s national interest.

If Trump wants to Make America Great Again, he needs to permanently remove from power the malevolent forces that sought to destroy not just him, but the legitimacy of our political system more broadly.

The post Reward Friends, Punish Enemies appeared first on The American Mind.