On Tuesday, Republican US presidential contender Donald Trump released a poll on the Truth Social website in which he emphasised that voters associate the word “revenge” most with a possible second term under his leadership, Reuters reports.
The campaign has ramped up ahead of the first contest for the Republican Party’s nomination. The post followed a separate post on Truth Social on Christmas Day in which the former president called on his political opponents to “rot in hell.”
The fact that Trump republished the poll, presented as a word cloud with the word “revenge” highlighted in bright red capital letters in the centre, suggests that his self-described “retaliation” agenda is very important to him as the US election year begins.
If Trump wins the 2024 presidential election in a likely runoff with Democratic President Joe Biden, the former president and many of his allies have promised to investigate, imprison and otherwise retaliate against his political opponents.
Trump claims he himself has been the victim of a revenge campaign orchestrated by Biden and his Justice Department, facing dozens of federal charges, many related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
Trump, 77, who is a clear contender for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, has denied any of the allegations.
Earlier in December, former Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Cash Patel, who remain close to the former president, said on a podcast that Trump is “absolutely serious” about retaliating against perceived enemies.
In a social media post Tuesday, Trump shared the results of a poll commissioned by DailyMail.com that asked voters to name the word they most associated with Trump’s plans for a second term.
The results, presented as a word cloud, showed that “revenge” was the most popular choice. “Power,” “dictatorship,” “economy” and “America” rounded out the top five.
In a Truth Social post on 25 December, Trump directed his aggression at those who disagree with him politically, whom he called “thugs”. He wrote:
MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!
A spokesman for Biden’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a 21 December memo, Biden’s campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez portrayed Trump’s candidacy as a threat to democracy:
He is running a campaign on revenge and retribution – and at the expense of Americans’ freedoms.
