Debra Thompson is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.
The true purpose driving the decisions of United States President Donald Trump is hard to pin down.
Many of his demands, including those that have laid siege to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and stand to decimate the federal public service, are straight out of the Project 2025 playbook, serving to appease the conservative base that won him the presidency. Others, like his dream to forcibly remove Palestinians and redevelop Gaza into his newest resort acquisition, seem both on-brand and off-kilter.
And then there is his consistent but intermittent imposition of tariffs on Canada, which he argues is because of illegal immigration, unequal trade deficits, fentanyl trafficking across the border, the location of the border itself, a 19th century-style reinvigoration of Manifest Destiny, our refusal to become the 51st state, Justin Trudeau’s political aspirations to stay in power and/or because he just likes tariffs.
Mr. Trump seems to be motivated by an ever-shifting set of grievances and aspirations. The capricious oscillation over tariffs on Canada is but one example of how he has used the tools of the presidency to further his personal, sometimes contradictory, political agenda.
Long before the 2024 election, President Donald Trump was clear that he would deploy presidential power to punish his political adversaries. In March 2023, he launched his re-election campaign at the Conservative Political Action Conference, telling the crowd: “In 2016 I declared, ‘I am your voice.’ Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
This is the simplest and most accurate way to understand Mr. Trump’s approach to the office of the president. Presidential power can no longer be understood, as the canon of American political science has long held, as the power to persuade. The presidency is now an instrument of political payback.
Some of Mr. Trump’s first acts as president were to exact vengeance on those who he believed wronged him. Upon taking office, he removed security protections from former officials that he now views as disloyal, including former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, former national security adviser John Bolton, and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who helped lead America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. More recently, Mr. Trump ordered the suspension of security clearances held by lawyers at the Washington law firm Covington & Burling, which assisted special counsel Jack Smith, who conducted a criminal investigation of Mr. Trump. He has also fired more than a dozen lawyers in the Justice Department who worked with Mr. Smith on the federal prosecutions.
Mr. Trump’s retribution also extends to those institutions that he considers weapons of the left, especially the media and universities. The Associated Press, widely known as a neutral source of journalism, was barred from accessing presidential events because of its refusal to accept Mr. Trump’s declaration that the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America. The Trump administration cancelled more than US$400-million worth of government grants and contracts with Columbia University, claiming that the move was because the university failed to protect its Jewish students from harassment. The more likely reason, however, is to intimidate other universities – 60 of which were recently issued warnings from the Department of Education that directly referenced the cancellation of Columbia’s funding – into silencing on-campus protests and in-classroom learning about anything that runs counter to conservativism.
The official pretenses for these actions are flimsy at best. What they all hold in common is an effort to make high-profile examples of Mr. Trump’s detractors, using fear to ensure compliance of those who might think to oppose him.
The more lasting and consequential effect, however, is the obliteration of democratic norms that have previously been so obvious they are almost unspoken. It is insane to have to say the words aloud, but the extensive executive power found within the office of the president of the United States should not be used to punish those who dare to challenge the President. It should especially not be wielded against the public service, the media and institutions of higher learning – all sworn to uphold democratic norms in their own way, all of which Mr. Trump seems to think are conspiring against him.
The unpredictability of which target will be next is a key element of this strategy. But compliance in advance is the worst possible response. Mr. Trump will never have punished all of his enemies. The deployment of presidential power serves wholly to bolster his insatiable ego and there will always be more scores to settle.