President Donald Trump took to Truth Social late Tuesday with a reboot of his retribution campaign. He boosted a pro-MAGA account that called for the arrests of two of his favorite targets, then amplified the message with three words that sounded like both a threat and a promise.
The president shared a post that demanded the arrest of former Attorney General Merrick Garland and former FBI Director Chris Wray, adding, “And many others!!!”
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has partly made his presidency a time for payback against the people and institutions he blames for various troubles, including the 2016 Russia investigation, his impeachments, and the congressional inquiry into the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol in 2021. The target list includes ex-prosecutors, former investigators, and officials connected to cases that have plagued him.
So far, Trump’s retribution campaign has been an epic failure as the law keeps getting in the way of his retribution. This pattern has raised new questions both in and out of Washington about whether his revenge campaign is becoming careless or simply facing obstacles.
Trump’s latest post was not a subtle policy statement or a careful call for accountability. It was more like pointing at enemies and challenging someone to act, with “many others” left as a vague warning.
The names he highlighted, Garland and Wray, are central to his grievance. Trump has consistently attacked Garland over the Justice Department’s oversight of investigations that personally affect him, including probes into his handling of classified documents and efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He has also kept Wray in his sights, repeatedly accusing him, without evidence, of lying about the presence of FBI agents during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
It came after a series of recent cases against Trump’s opponents that have stumbled. Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted in 2025, leading to accusations that Trump orchestrated the charges for political revenge. A federal judge later dismissed that case. The same judge also dismissed the case against New York Attorney General Letitia James, another Trump critic, delivering another blow to the administration’s effort to take down its biggest enemies.
To make matters worse, his attempts to reindict Comey and James also failed at the grand jury.
These courtroom losses have only increased the feeling that Trump is trying to pressure the judiciary into supporting outcomes it won’t endorse, then using social media to turn each defeat into a fresh demand for retribution.
In Vanity Fair, Susie Wiles pushed back on the idea that Trump is simply pursuing vengeance, but she also acknowledged it can seem that way. When asked about her earlier comment that Trump promised to end “the revenge and retribution tour after 90 days,” Wiles said, “I don’t think he’s on a retribution tour,” and described what she called a governing principle for him, “‘I don’t want what happened to me to happen to somebody else.’”
She added that “In some cases, it may look like retribution,” and conceded, “there may be an element of that from time to time,” before closing with, “Who would blame him? Not me.”
