On Saturday, November 9, the comedians of “Saturday Night Live”, a true American television institution for fifty years, had a message for Donald Trump, a few days after his presidential victory. “Every single person on this set voted for you. (…). “So if you keep some kind of enemies list, we shouldn’t be on it.” they joked. If they chose to treat the subject in a joking tone, that says a lot about the climate of tension in the United States.
The president-elect has made revenge a leitmotif of his campaign. For years, he has threatened retaliation against those who stand in his way, even going so far as to present his political opponents as “internal enemies”. But what credibility can be given to these projections? Should we see this as simple campaign rhetoric aimed at galvanizing his troops? Or a real desire to make those who opposed him pay?
His supporters point out that Donald Trump did not take legal action against Hillary Clinton after her victory in 2016, even though he had promised to do so. His detractors point out that he now has practically all the levers of power, an ultra-loyal environment that will not oppose him and broad immunity granted in July to sitting presidents by the conservative-majority Supreme Court. Small sample of the many personalities he publicly targeted.
Liz Cheney, enemy number one, from her own side
She is one of his most symbolic adversaries. The former Republican elected has become a pariah within her own party, since she agreed to co-chair the commission of inquiry into the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The daughter of Dick Cheney, former vice president of George W. Bush, has continued to highlight Donald Trump’s central role in this coup attempt.
Defeated by a Trumpist in the 2022 midterm elections in Wyoming, she campaigned alongside Kamala Harris to prevent Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office. he dreams of seeing her “in prison with the rest of the members” of the commission, as he wrote in March on his social network Truth Social. Four days before the elections, he accused her of being a “go to radical war”, due to their foreign policy positions. “Let’s put her with a gun and nine others shooting at her and see how she feels when guns are pointed at her. about her”, -he blurted out.
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