Vengeance Is Mine, Saith the Lord

The question on the floor is, should Donald Trump go after his enemies? “Lock her up!” was one of the rallying cries of the 2016 campaign, and Hillary richly deserved to be locked up. The crooked justice system of the Obama administration gave her a pass, and Donald Trump had a country to govern.

Then, when the shoe was on the other foot and Donald Trump “threatened” again, the crazy left went wild on lawfare, designed both to besmirch his reputation and derail his candidacy.

But Trump kept beating the rap, or at least beating it well enough by postponing any consequences that the left never laid a glove on him, or “worse” (from their perspective): it may have increased his popularity with a segment of the voting public. The day he was convicted in New York City, his campaign raked in $52.8 million. Eat your heart out, Alvin Bragg and Judge Merchan.

But what should Trump do now? Move on or get even seem to be the two possibilities.

The problem with trying to get even is that it would distract him from solving the very real problems facing the country.

Still, the rule of law is important, and it would seem callous, and perhaps a dereliction of duty, to allow those who willfully and schemingly broke the rules to get off without at least some public humiliation, if not punishment. Punishment doesn’t have to be retribution.

It’s true, doing evil has its own reward: a cruel man attracts nothing but trouble.

Even so, Trump should be entitled to retire, eventually, in peace, and not be hounded by Bragg and his loaves-and-fishes 34-count felony case and E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit, which resulted in an order for Trump to pay her $88.3 million!

What to do? Perhaps Trump’s Department of Justice should resurrect the documents case against Biden; he seemed guilty even if, perhaps, also so far gone that a jury might not convict him. Even so, being chased around the block by Trump’s Justice Department might, er, encourage Biden and his friends (if he has any left) to persuade Bragg and Carroll to confess error and drop their suits. That might be adequate compensation and perhaps put an end to the endless lawfare.

Meanwhile, back in the political arena, it has been reported that Pelosi, rumored to have been the woman who gave President Biden the hemlock after his disastrous June 27 debate with Trump, now says Biden should have announced months earlier that he would not run again. That’s rich! “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said ungrammatically. (She should have said, “. . . there might have been other candidates.”)

Why should he have gotten out earlier? The obvious answer is that he was incompetent, as all could see. But the pols lied and lied and lied to the American people.

Kamala Harris, who spent countless hours with Biden and other officials in the days that followed the attack on Israel, said he was “on top of it all.” Dan Goldman (D-NY) said, “[Biden is] sharper than anyone I’ve spoken to.” Illinois Democrat Governor J.B. Pritzker said, “I’ve been with the president of the United States many times. He is on the ball.” Pelosi said, “Joe Biden has vision; he has knowledge; he [is] a strategic thinker. This is a very sharp president in terms of his public presentation. . . . He’s very sharp.” Yeah, right.

The scandalous part is that Pelosi and scores of others wish only that they had persuaded him to announce that he would not run for reelection earlier, whereas what they should have done, knowing his debility, was tell him to resign as president.

But, no: they were perfectly content to let this incompetent man stay at the helm of the country, with his finger oh-so-close to the nuclear button. They ignored the implication of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, which is that they (the Cabinet) not only had the means of removing an incompetent president but the obligation as well.

But Pelosi isn’t confessing to that failure, however much she may be regretting it.

And it must smart to know that if the Democrats had persuaded him to resign—or invoked the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and removed him—Harris’s campaign would have had a longer runway and might [not “may,” Ms. Pelosi] have been able to get airborne.

And of course, the Democrats might [not “may”] have chosen a different candidate. Voters’ key concerns were (surprise) inflation, the tsunami of illegal immigrants, and Harris’s focus on cultural topics like transgender issues. A different candidate would not have had to support the Biden-Harris concentration on those unpopular actions that defined the Biden-Harris administration.

But no: they kept propping up Joe (“Weekend at Bernie’s”) Biden. Their scandalous dereliction of duty, as events turned out, benefitted the country, but that does not absolve them from their irresponsible behavior.

After the shellacking voters gave the Democrats, it would seem to be time to turn the page, of course. But can we be sure the Democrats won’t seek to hound Trump when he leaves office? The unfortunate answer is, no, we cannot be sure, which is why it may be advisable for him to take some prophylactic action now—not from vengeance (that is best left to God), but to spare the country from the kind of embarrassing lawfare the Democrats have engaged in for the last several years.

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Daniel Oliver is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of the Education and Research Institute and a Director of the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Reagan, he was Executive Editor and subsequently Chairman of the Board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review.

Email Daniel Oliver at Daniel.Oliver@TheCandidAmerican.com.