Well, not really. President Richard Nixon and President Donald Trump are not conjoined twins, in many ways they are different. But they are also in one way – in one extremely important way – the same. Both are stained by hate. Hate for anyone and everyone they perceive as an opponent – which in their case means an enemy.
Nixon in/famously kept an “enemies list.” The list started small but grew over time to over 200 names for the express purpose of doing them harm. How was this to be accomplished? By for example, tax audits, federal contracts, litigation, and prosecution. In a memo, White House Counsel John Dean explained the purpose of the list:
This memorandum addresses the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration; stated a bit more bluntly – how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.
“Screw our political enemies” – sound familiar?
In his book Nixon vs Nixon, psychiatrist David Abrahamson wrote about him:
He couldn’t forget the snubs, the injuries he received throughout his life, and he was now giving it back word for word. Revenge was at the core of his feelings. Not once did he talk about a wrongdoing he had committed. His behavior followed his early pattern: fighting belligerently while proclaiming his innocence.
“Fighting belligerently while proclaiming his innocence” – sound familiar?
So far as we know Trump never, not literally, had an “enemies list.” Maybe because there was never any need. It has long been understood that anyone who is not strongly for President Trump is against President Trump and, therefore, a potential target. At his first 2024 campaign rally in Waco, Texas, Trump meant it when he said: “I am your justice. For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
No surprise then when within days of taking office, in ways both large and small, the president sought to demean and destroy some of his real and imagined enemies. From stripping people of their security details, to suing networks and newspapers, to humiliating a longtime punching bag, Volodymyr Zelensky, to threatening select universities and law firms, to attacking certain members of the judiciary, just two months in Trump has already gone all out.
Perhaps the strongest indicator of Trump’s anger, of his passion for retribution, is his virulent, violent use of the English language. Kamala Harris was labelled “lazy,” “slow,” “Low IQ,” “mentally impaired,” a vice president who should be “impeached and prosecuted.” Since moving back into the Oval Office, the president has called political opponents: “scum,” “savages,” “deranged thugs,” “Marxists,” “violent,” “vicious” “radical leftists,” and “corrupt.” Meantime his henchman, Elon Musk, has repeatedly attacked those who personify the law, judges, calling them “corrupt,” “radical,” and “evil,” and “deriding the “TYRANNY of the JUDICIARY.”*
Most of us prefer to have everyone love us. But we manage to avoid being obsessed by those who do not. Richard Milhouse Nixon could not, Donald John Trump cannot, do the same. Like Nixon Trump is consumed by the intensity of his antipathy.
—————————————————————–
*For more on this see Peter Wehner, “Trump’s Appetite for Revenge is Insatiable” in The Atlantic, March 20, 2025.