Image Credit: Phillip Faraone / Contributor / Getty Images 
In the run-up to the 2024 election, there was talk of a Trump “revenge” or “retribution” presidency, in which our golden-haired hero would get even, at long last, with all the people who had frustrated his first-term agenda, helped steal the 2020 election, and were then, at that very moment, doing everything they could to prevent him from being re-elected—including commissioning his murder. The prospect of an angrier, meaner Trump returning to the White House and laying waste to his enemies was tantalising, Shakespearian even. A final act fit for an archetypal story—the Odyssey, anyone?—or if not Homer at least a Quentin Tarantino film. Trump Unchained, or something like that.
We’ve definitely seen glimpses of Trump-the-revenger since January 20th. Just this week, John Bolton, one of the worst, most disloyal of all Trump’s first-term cabinet members, was arrested and charged with eighteen counts that could see him spend the rest of his natural life, and a good chunk of his unnatural life too, in jail. James Comey and Letitia James are also facing charges, and Jack Smith, the special counsel who went after Trump twice during the Biden presidency, is in big trouble as well. He’s now been referred to the DoJ for misconduct and disbarment proceedings, after it was revealed he had been spying on a number of Republican Senators and a Congressman.
Overall though, I think it would be better to call the second Trump presidency the “friends and enemies” presidency. It doesn’t sound as good, obviously, as the “revenge” presidency, but it’s a more accurate description of what’s been going on.
That rather less elegant moniker captures the fact that while Trump is pursuing his enemies—and, just as importantly, he now knows who they are, something that couldn’t be said of Trump 1.0–he’s also doing something equally as fundamental: He’s looking after his friends.
If you’re going to do one, you have to do the other. If you want to do politics properly, anyway.
Trump is a loyal man and he values loyalty perhaps more than anything else. There’s a wonderful clip of him being interviewed twenty or thirty years ago by someone like Charlie Rose, and he says, “One day I’d like to lose everything, just so I can find out who really stays loyal to me.” A lot of men will tell you they feel that way, but Trump is crazy and real enough to mean it.
Even so, during Trump’s first term, his administration didn’t protect its friends anywhere near as well as it should have. Too often, the administration simply rolled over and allowed its enemies to dictate the narrative about members of the administration and its policies. Instead of a steadfast refusal to play along, an endless media circus of exposés, apologies, firings. Paralysis.
I think of what happened to Darren Beattie, for example, when it was revealed he had been present at an event with Bad People. Beattie was forced to walk, and spent seven years in the wilderness, before being welcomed back to a senior position in the State Department this year.
Beattie’s return was a sign Trump and the people around him had learnt from the mistakes of 2017-2021.
This week, we had two more. First of all, Trump commuted the sentence of former Rep. George Santos. Santos was serving seven years in prison for inflating fundraising numbers and falsifying donor names in order to secure financial support from the Republican Party during the 2022 election cycle.
Trump announced the commutation on Friday, on Truth Social. The post was vintage Trump.
“George Santos was somewhat of a ‘rogue,’ but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison,” Trump wrote.
He then launched a vicious attack on Senator Richard Blumenthal, whom he called “Da Nang Dick” and a “COMPLETE AND TOTAL FRAUD” for lying for decades about his military record in Vietnam.
“This is far worse than what George Santos did, and at least Santos had the Courage, Conviction and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!”
So there you have it: This man is a friend, he’s always been loyal, he’s not really done anything that wrong in the grand scheme of things—so I’m going to use my power to help him out and all you losers on the other side can go suck it.
Santos is unlikely to return to politics, and it’s probably for the best. But he’s a free man again.
The second, more important, sign was the administration’s handling of the ongoing scandal about offensive messages sent by members of the Young Republicans. Basically, a bunch of messages were leaked in which some junior Republicans said the kind of dumb shit people say in right-wing political groupchats. Hitler jokes and that sort of thing. Hardly edifying, but they were speaking in private—or so they thought—and it’s obvious they had little real commitment to the edgy stuff they were saying.
During Trump’s first term, these (mostly) young dumbasses would have been thrown to the liberal wolves and torn apart in the most vicious and public manner imaginable. But this is 2025, not 2017. Things are different now.
Vice President Vance has led the way and set the tone for the official response. He used social media as a fitting medium to convey just how unseriously he took the whole thing.
On Thursday he Tweeted, “A friend shared these truly disturbing messages from a Young Republicans group chat. The group’s leader ‘genuinely’ calls for murdering the children of his political opponents. Oh wait, this is actually from Jay Jones, the Democrat running for Attorney General in Virginia.”
Perfect. The Vice President couldn’t have done a better job of reframing the story by pointing to the far more disturbing case of the Democrat candidate who really does want to murder his opponents and their children.
Vance then reiterated the new improved Trump line on silly trivial shit during an appearance on the Charlie Kirk show.
“Grow up! Focus on the real issues. Don’t focus on what kids say in group chats… The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys—they tell edgy offensive jokes. That’s what kids do.”
When asked for comment on the “scandal,” the White House referred reporters to the Vice President’s comments.
Job done.
Of course, not everybody on the right is toeing this line. The usual suspects—representatives of the old GOP Trump has destroyed—are up in arms and shouting very loudly about the danger of what is already, and has been for the better part of a decade, a fait accompli.
Here’s Susan Del Percio, for example, a long-time opponent of Donald Trump, talking about how the new generation of Republicans don’t know any better—even though they should.
“Those who are new to [GOP politics] have come up in the last 8, 10 years seeing what Donald Trump has done, and how he in many ways gets away with his rhetoric and his taking down of people. It’s a lie, lie, deny. And in this case it should be: condemn everything.”
I’m not sure that little rant makes sense, but I think I get the gist. Ultimately, as in all things, it’s Donald Trump’s fault. He’s responsible for what those Young Republicans said: He’s the one who’s lowered the tone and made incivility and hatred the guiding principles in American politics.
As with George Santos, I don’t think these Young Republicans have a great future ahead of them in politics. If you’re dumb enough to talk like that in a group chat, even jokingly, you’re just not going to make it. I’m sorry.
But still, by resisting the old well-established urge to sit in the corner and watch their opponents go to work on their friends, the Trump administration really has shown how decisive its break with the cuckservative past is. There’s no going back now, whether you like it or not.
