Donald Trump would like to see a lot of people--people he regards as his enemies--put in jail.
It was reported in early October that his Justice Department was attempting to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide, during Trump's first term, to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
Ms. Hutchinson came into public view because of her testimony, in 2022, before the House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Ms. Hutchinson--who, I believe, displayed great courage in testifying publicly--described what she witnessed, and what she was told about, before, during, and after the attack on the Capitol.
Last Tuesday, the indictment the government sought against her was rejected by a federal grand jury in Washington.
Cases the Trump Justice Department brought against James Comey and Letitia James--as part of Trump's campaign against his perceived enemies--were dismissed by a judge. Two grand juries later refused to re-indict Ms. James. Another case brought against Mr. Comey--the "seashells case"--has not yet been resolved. The Justice Department revealed this past week that it was pursuing new charges against Mr. Comey, concerning the alleged leaking of classified information a decade ago.
Another case, of course, targeted six Democrats (two Senators and four House members) regarding a video they made which reminded service members that they were not required to follow illegal orders. All of the Democrats in the video had military or intelligence backgrounds. The case, Trump posted on social media after the video was released, constituted “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” In early 2026, a grand jury in Washington declined to indict them.
Trump's retribution efforts, however, will no doubt continue.
They will continue, I think, for this reason: it is that the man who wants to jail people he doesn't like, is himself a prisoner.
He is a prisoner of his obsessions. He is a prisoner of his resentments, his hatreds, his need to exact revenge.
He can't let go of his defeat in the 2020 election. He is fixated upon "winning"; upon tariffs ("I always say 'tariffs' is the most beautiful word to me in the dictionary"); fixated upon defaming and vilifying immigrants, and does whatever he can to bring fear to the country's immigrant communities. He is obsessed with presidents Obama and Biden, and talks about them at every opportunity; he is fixated upon Vladimir Putin and other dictators or autocrats, while routinely attacking America's allies. He is obsessed with his building projects (the ballroom, the D.C. golf course, the Reflecting Pool, The Kennedy Center, the decorative changes to the White House and its grounds), at the expense of attentiveness to issues Americans are concerned about.
And he is obsessed, certainly, with criticisms he receives, or with the most basic questioning of his decisions and his words--from reporters, commentators, from governmental and political figures, former military figures, judges, prosecutors, protesters, comedians. He has often called the media "the enemy of the people." In a speech this past week, he said that the media was "the biggest threat" to the country.
While he clearly enjoys power, I would suggest he is perhaps even more interested in control--seeking to control what is said about him, whether from the aforementioned press he despises so much, or from TV hosts such as Jimmy Kimmel.
Here is something Trump has said in varying forms, over time, which is deeply revealing. As he put it, this past July: "I only like people who like me."
Those who he feels don't like him are, it is clear, the enemy.
One thinks of the recent controversy concerning Vivek Ramaswamy, Republican candidate for Governor in Ohio.
On Thursday, the Ramaswamy campaign took off the air the widely (and justifiably) condemned TV ad featuring the mother of the Democratic candidate in the race, Amy Acton.
Ramaswamy, who made billions of dollars during his business career, had said he would spend four million dollars running the ad; it appears that in the end, a little less than a million dollars was spent on the airing of it.
He defended the ad, while it aired--and made no apologies about it when announcing its end. He said of the ad, on Thursday: "It ran to completion, and we've put up four other ads."
Ramaswamy ran for president during the 2024 Republican primary season, but dropped out after the Iowa caucuses. Dr. Amy Acton is the former director of the Ohio Department of Health.
I have, I will mention, no affection for Ramaswamy's politics, or his aggressive, combative political style.
Yet based solely on his airing of the TV ad, Ramaswamy deserves to lose the Ohio election. I hope he will lose by a mile.
It doesn't take courage to put up an ad like this. It takes cynicism, cruelty, the disregarding of human feeling.
The courage, in this story, rests with Dr. Acton.
In 1978, when she was twelve years old, Amy Acton testified, before a grand jury, that her stepfather, Cledith "Bud" Arthur, had raped her.
Dr. Acton has said that the rapes took place over a period of three years.
I cannot imagine what it must have been like, to testify before a grand jury, as a child, about being raped by her mother's husband. Yet I know that it must have taken great courage to do so.
Her stepfather was arrested, and indicted for rape. He pleaded not guilty.
Her mother, Donna Arthur, is now 82. Donna Arthur lost custody of Amy Acton and her younger brother, Philip, in 1978, at the time of the indictment; the children were removed from her home, and they began living with their biological father, who had been divorced from Acton's mother when Acton was three years old.
Dr, Acton is now sixty years old. The last time she saw and spoke with her mother was in 1978, at the courthouse in Ohio where her stepfather was indicted.
Her stepfather never went to trial after his indictment for rape. He fled the state, and Dr. Acton's mother, Acton's brother Philip has recently said, stayed with him, and remained married to him until his death in 2004 in Pennsylvania.
In the TV ad which aired, Dr. Acton's mother called her daughter a liar, and said, "she's lied her entire life," and therefore shouldn't be trusted to serve as governor. The ad did not refer to the charge of rape against Acton's stepfather--although the publication Politifact has reported that in a 2020 interview with the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, Donna Arthur said that Acton lied about her stepfather, and what she alleged took place in the 1970s. In an October 23rd piece, however, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg made note of a telling detail in Arthur's 2020 comments to Operation Rescue. Donna Arthur, Michelle Goldberg wrote, "speculated that Acton got the idea to say Bud Arthur raped her from his daughter from a previous marriage, who’d made a similar claim." (italics added)
Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, said, on October 22nd: "The ad, on its face, is deeply, deeply troubling. It's wrong to run this ad." (Though Governor DeWine did not retract his previous endorsement of Ramaswamy.) Ohio Senator Jon Husted said: "I would not have run that ad."
Vice President JD Vance, however, attacked Republicans who criticized the ad, arguing they were "whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America." He also said: "Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar."
Vance was obviously unconcerned about the morality of exploiting a family rupture, by using, in a TV ad, a mother, now 82 years old, who decades before had stood with her husband, after he was accused of raping her 12 year-old daughter.
And, of course, President Trump weighed in on the advertisement. He wrote on social media, on October 22nd, that Ramaswamy "had put up a very powerful Ad." He said that "Vivek should keep [the ad] up, and let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals!" He added: "The Press is trying to convince everyone that the Ad is bad, because it's so good! Who wouldn't use such an Ad? I would, it's called 'hitting pay dirt.'"
I make note of the sinister, perverse nature of Trump's description of Dr. Acton as "defective."
That she "lies, cheats, and steals!"--and does so "uncontrollably"? Trump's insults, so often, seem to be an ongoing form of autobiography.
Trump wrote, on October 22nd, that Dr. Acton's mother was "brave," and that appearing in the ad "took a lot of courage to do."
The day before, as reported by the website MEDIAite, there was the following exchange outside The White House between Trump and a reporter. The reporter said this:
"Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton is estranged from her mother after suffering sexual abuse as a child," a reporter noted to the president outside the White House on Wednesday.
"Where is this? Where?" Trump asked.
"In Ohio," the reporter clarified. "The governor candidate for Democrats, Amy Acton. Her mother is featured in an ad by Vivek Ramaswamy. She's estranged from her mother — "
"I don't know anything about it," Trump interjected. "I heard that there's something where his — her mother went against her. Uh, I don't know what that has to do with Vivek."
"She suffered from sexual abuse by her mother's husband," the reporter added.
"I just don't know that, and as you know — " the president continued.
"Was it appropriate to put that in a campaign ad?" the reporter wondered.
"If it was about a Republican, I can guarantee you they'd let it go, so that's why you're asking," Trump fired back. "The fact is, I know nothing about it, but I hear the mother went very rogue on the daughter, doesn't have a lot of respect for the daughter, and I think the mother is a witness to things, also. So, who knows? And you'll have to figure that out. It's a very unusual situation to have a mother hate a daughter that much, but I don't think that has anything to do with Vivek."
So: Trump claimed he was unaware of the story regarding Dr. Acton's stepfather ("I know nothing about it"), and didn't seem interested in looking into it--or having his people investigate the matter further. Nonetheless, he clearly took Dr. Acton's mother's side--accepting at face value, giving credence to, the remarks she made in the ad.
To Trump, it seems, the degree of hate expressed by Amy Acton's mother ("It's a very unusual situation to have a mother hate a daughter that much") provided confirmation, validation, of her truthfulness.
The day after the above exchange with the press, Trump addressed reporters again, outside The White House. As noted below, one of the questioners was the NBC News reporter Monica Alba.
From a story in the publication Deadline, on October 23rd:
Referring to the Ramaswany ad, Trump on Friday said, "A mother is saying, 'Don't put my daughter there because she's a terrible person and she's a liar. Why shouldn't somebody use that?"
NBC News' Monica Alba then asked him, "But do the sexual abuse allegations mean nothing to you?" Trump went on, but Alba continued to ask the question.
"Who are you with?" he asked her.
"I am with NBC sir," she responded.
"One of the worst networks you have," he said.
She continued to ask about the sexual abuse allegations, and Trump told her, "Quiet."
"Isn't she a fresh person? You're a horrible little reporter, aren't you?" Trump said.
Trump said, "If my mother said bad things about me, do you think the Democrats would put it up? I think so. But my mother thought I was wonderful." He looked up in the air and said, "Thank you, Mom."
He said of Acton's mother, "She said her daughter is a disaster. Her daughter is a liar. And she felt she had a obligation … I should be so lucky to have an ad like that."
He then asked Alba, "Why wouldn't you listen to a mother that says that? Why? Miss NBC, why wouldn't you, listen."
Alba responded, "She stayed with her stepfather."
"I don't know anything about her stepfather," Trump said.
He says he doesn't know--but if he does know, it obviously doesn't concern him.
Amy Acton is a Democrat. That's all the information Trump evidently needs. Vivek Ramaswamy likes him, supports him, and so he likes Vivek Ramaswamy. Dr. Acton, from what I have seen, has a genuine, humane quality to her. Yet she is just another enemy, to Trump (and to Ramaswamy, and Vance): someone to go after, someone to take down.
