The retaliatory presidency

Trump will stop at nothing to hit back at anyone who crosses him. That is extremely dangerous.

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images, Alenast/iStock, -slav-/iStock)

In the last few days, President Trump has threatened the Ukraine whistleblower with the treatment meted out in "old times" to "spies," which means execution. He has suggested that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee that is investigating the scandal, should be arrested and charged with treason for unfairly characterizing Trump's comments soliciting dirt about former Vice President Joe Biden from the Ukrainian president. And he has warned that if Democrats try to remove him from office through impeachment, they will trigger another "civil war" in the country.

This language may be spooky — but it is not surprising. Trump thrives on chaos. But the one constant in everything he does is that he will pull out all the stops to retaliate against anyone who crosses him — friend or foe, domestic or foreign. This would be a dangerous trait in a person with any degree of power let alone the most powerful man on the planet.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.