Donald Trump is on a revenge tour.

Anyone in any doubt must not have heard the president’s eulogy for Charlie Kirk on Sunday, when he told the thousands who gathered at the memorial: ‘I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.’

In the face of this ire, laws are not rules to Trump – they’re leverage. Everything is about leverage. Either you’re pulling the leash, or someone is pulling yours. His two latest outrages are proof of this.

One is leaning on TV networks over what is said on air. Jimmy Kimmel told a tasteless lie to his audience in painting Charlie Kirk’s killer as a MAGA Republican.

Instead of letting ABC decide for itself how much dishonesty it could stomach, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr threatened the network, using the leverage the FCC has to disapprove media company mergers.

When ABC then yanked Kimmel last week, Trump declared it a ‘great day for America.’

Writing on Truth Social he said: ‘Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!’

ABC might well have suspended Kimmel anyway and has since reinstated him rather than face blowback for appearing to dance to Trump’s tune.

Donald Trump is on a revenge tour. In the face of this ire, laws are not rules to Trump – they’re leverage. Everything is about leverage

When ABC yanked Kimmel last week Trump declared it a ‘great day for America.’ Writing on Truth Social he stated: ‘Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done’

Still, some seventy affiliates refused to air his return to the screen.

On Saturday, Trump was on Truth Social again, this time to complain to attorney general Pam Bondi that ‘nothing is being done’ to prosecute former FBI director Jim Comey, California Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump wrote his post like a private message and only left it public temporarily, but a man who famously never uses email and hates putting things in writing must have meant this as a public shot across her bow.

He wants his enemies nailed.

Why these enemies? Because they’re the same people who bent the law and abused power to get Trump. Because they dragged his friends through expensive investigations and prosecutions.

James tried to fine Trump half a billion dollars and end his family business for misrepresenting the value of his properties to big banks that knew better. It may have helped him get a better interest rate, she argued. The New York courts threw out the penalty, but only months after the election.

Now, Trump wants James, Schiff and others punished for misrepresenting second homes as their primary residences, even in cases where the lenders may have known better. It got them a better interest rate, he argues.

Bill Pulte, his head of the Federal Housing Administration, has turned the agency into a weapon for digging through the loan applications of Trump’s enemies.

This is dirty payback. The targets deserve it, but that doesn’t make it right.

For years now, Republicans have rightly complained that Democrats were abusing the law and government power and breaking norms of civil politics.

The response was perfectly captured in 2015 when Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid was asked if he regretted abusing his position to falsely paint Mitt Romney as a tax cheat during the 2012 presidential election. Reid’s shameless response: ‘Romney didn’t win, did he?’

Now, Democrats wish that the Republican president was the fair-minded Romney, not a hellbent Trump. But if Democrats didn’t get what they wanted, they got what they chose.

If the Trump/Kimmel debacle all seems familiar, it’s because we watched federal regulators, the White House and the FBI lean on social media companies for years under Joe Biden to suppress ‘misinformation’.

No law gave them that power – they just used the leverage they had. The Supreme Court said it was just too hard for courts to police this.

For years, Democrats showered taxpayer funding on their allies, picked winners and losers in the economy by meddling in private business, stifled dissent on campuses, got people canceled from jobs for old or irrelevant remarks, pursued lawfare against political enemies, whistleblowers and journalists and empowered regulators to creatively expand the law.

For years now, Republicans have rightly complained that Democrats were abusing the law and government power and breaking norms of civil politics

We watched federal regulators, the White House and the FBI lean on social media companies for years under Joe Biden (pictured with son Hunter) to suppress ‘misinformation’

Meanwhile, they circled the wagons around their own people, to the point where Bill Clinton got away with felonies in office and Biden pardoned his whole family for influence-peddling. 

Now, Democrats cry crocodile tears that Trump is serving them a taste of their own bad medicine. Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen complains that this is all ‘banana republic’ stuff – but where was he the last four years?

Trump leans on Republican states to gerrymander their districts. Democrats threaten to retaliate, but their states are already so gerrymandered there’s not much left to do. Democrats raged at Trump’s January 6 pardons after they shoveled autopen-signed pardons out the door for their own people.

Republicans can’t disarm in the face of Democratic abuses. And let’s face it: responding Trump-style and making them squirm feels good.

Some of the norms that Trump is tearing down were never worth that much. When Reid killed the filibuster for appeals-court judges Mitch McConnell told him he’d regret it, then a few years later did the very same to the filibuster for Supreme Court justices. It turned out that Republicans benefited from ending those filibusters, which made it harder to confirm conservative judges without stopping liberal ones.

But a world of scorched earth lawfare against political enemies and sticking the government’s finger in every pie isn’t one we should want to live in.

There’s a better way: permanently take away government powers that keep getting abused. Republicans hated the Independent Counsel law in the 1980s. After they turned it against Clinton, both parties agreed not to renew the law. Everyone won.

There are many similar reforms that could be done now. The FCC shouldn’t even exist and it certainly shouldn’t supervise mergers.

Plenty of other agency powers accomplish little and are ripe for abuse. There are too many vague criminal laws that can be bent the way they were twisted against Trump; Congress should repeal them. Too many regulations keep businesses on a government leash. Fewer colleges should depend on government money.

Only a fool fights in a burning house and nobody wants to serve in a climate where the wrong politics can get you jailed or shot.

Trump didn’t start this war. But it has to end somewhere. It’s time for conservatives to end the cycle of political prosecutions that Democrats started.

Fighting fire with fire may feel good, but escalating this forever won’t end well for anybody.

What we need now isn’t payback but an exit strategy.