Donald Trump Spends Labor Day Weekend Planning A Revenge Tour

As Donald Trump’s federal and state criminal cases are putting an unwanted legal spotlight on his business and political dealings, the former president is responding in predictable fashion: vowing to imprison his opponents.

“The Crooked Joe Biden Campaign has thrown so many Indictments and lawsuits against me that Republicans are already thinking about what we are going to do to Biden and the Communists when it’s our turn,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday evening. “They have started a whole new Banana Republic way of thinking about political campaigns. So cheap and dirty, but that’s where America is right now. Be careful what you wish for!”

In addition to multiple civil cases, Trump currently faces four criminal indictments, including one in federal court for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and one in Georgia for his election meddling scheme there. He has consistently claimed that the indictments are unfounded and politically motivated. In another Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump alleged that “the Fake Indictments and lawsuits against me, 8 of them, all come out of the Biden Campaign for purposes of Election Interference.”

And yet, Trump’s baseless charges don’t seem to be landing. According to a Politico Magazine/IPSOS poll from earlier this month, a majority of Americans—including two-thirds of independents—believe the DOJ’s federal indictment was based on “a fair evaluation of the evidence and the law.” More voters believe Trump weaponized the DOJ than Biden. Trump’s actions and statements in the criminal cases unfolding against him were rated far less favorably by voters than those of Joe Biden and DOJ officials like Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel Jack Smith.

An overwhelming majority of polled voters, moreover, said they wanted Trump to stand trial in the federal election overturning case before the 2024 presidential election. Last week, they got their wish: Federal judge Tanya Chutkan set a trial date for March 2024, just a day before Super Tuesday. Trump’s lawyers were asking for a 2026 trial date.

Trump’s Truth Social post isn’t the only disturbing promise he made this week. In an interview with Glenn Beck last week, Beck asked the former president about his 2016 “Lock her up” promise, and whether he’d make good on imprisoning his political opponents if elected in 2024. “You have no choice because they’re doing it to us,” Trump replied.

These are themes Trump has sounded throughout the campaign. During his first campaign rally in Waco, Texas in March, Trump said, “For those who have been wronged and betrayed…I am your retribution.” At that event, Trump played a song he recorded with the “J6 Prison Choir,” a group of January 6 rioters imprisoned in Washington.

None of this has appeared to dim the former president’s 2024 prospects, both against the GOP primary field and against the current president. In FiveThirtyEight’s compilation of GOP primary polls, Trump currently holds a commanding 37-point lead over second-place Ron DeSantis. The first New York Times poll of the 2024 race showed Trump and Biden in a dead heat.