
In December, Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker asked Donald Trump about his threats of revenge during the campaign. He demurred. 'I'm not looking to go back into the past. I'm looking to make our country successful,' he said. 'Retribution will be through success.' During the first two months of his presidency, the prevailing theme of Trump's White House was the Elon Musk'led attempt to drastically cut federal agencies. The purge is incomplete'the U.S. DOGE Service continues to seek cuts at more agencies, and litigation has slowed or blocked some of the cuts'but we seem to have already moved into the next stage: revenge. Trump took one of his most chilling steps toward retribution last week, when he directed the government to investigate two officials in his first administration: Chris Krebs, who headed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Miles Taylor, who was chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security. The reasons Trump is out to get these two...
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