Donald Trump was gleeful on Thursday night as he reacted to the federal indictment of James Comey, the former FBI director who for years has been an object of the president’s scorn.
“JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” the US president declared on social media, celebrating the charges of obstruction and making false statements levelled against one of his top political foes.
The criminal prosecution of Comey, which Trump was so desperate to secure that he abruptly replaced the prosecutors on the case just a few days ago, marks a stunning escalation in the president’s campaign of judicial retribution that he placed at the heart of his second presidential term.
It highlights Trump’s over-brimming confidence as he seeks to impose his Maga right-wing agenda with a mixture of fierce determination, disdain for conventional restraints and near-endless showmanship.
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He’s going full-bore and he’s trying to test the boundaries of what he can do
— Doug Heye, a senior Republican strategist
The US Department of Justice’s move against Comey – which came at the same time as the announcement of a slew of new US tariffs on imports of products ranging from drugs to trucks – came a few days after Trump told pregnant women not to take a common painkiller because of its unproven links with autism. Last Sunday, he delivered a eulogy blasting his enemies at the Arizona memorial service for Charlie Kirk, the slain conservative activist. “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them,” Trump said with a smile.
Even in the face of relatively lacklustre approval ratings and a vulnerable economy, and with midterm elections little more than a year away, Trump is willing to risk the perception that he is exceeding his powers and overplaying his hand – almost on a daily basis – in order to galvanise his devoted base of right-wing and conservative voters.
In an era where social media and vibes are driving so much of public life, Trump seems to be betting that if he can keep dominating the nation’s attention, this will allow him to defy conventional political gravity.
“He’s going full-bore and he’s trying to test the boundaries of what he can do,” says Doug Heye, a senior Republican strategist.
“Trump and his team have seemed very committed to enacting a much sharper ideological agenda . . . almost heedless of whether people support it,” adds Matt Dallek, political historian and a professor at George Washington University.
Free speech
Fresh on the agenda is free speech, with the Kirk murder triggering a push by Trump and his allies to quash any criticism of the victim, who was aligned with many White House positions on everything from immigration to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Trump cheered on ABC’s decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel, the late-night television show host, for his comments about Kirk’s death, before he was allowed to return to air. The US president also threatened that TV networks could lose their licences if they are too biased against the White House, in what is widely seen as another affront to free speech.
But Trump is not only focused on avenging Kirk. On Monday, the US president issued controversial new guidelines to warn pregnant women not to take acetaminophen, the fever reducer known as Tylenol in the US and paracetamol in Ireland, based on unproven claims it contributed to autism.
Instead, women needed to “tough it out”, Trump said in a comment alongside health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. “It recalls some of the worst excesses of his leadership during Covid . . . and was a big reason why he lost the 2020 election,” says Dallek.
On the foreign policy front, Trump was in New York this week, with his key focus being the discussions over a massive US financial rescue for Argentina and its libertarian president Javier Milei. But Trump made waves in other ways. He abruptly shifted the US to a more pro-Ukraine stance in its war against Russia with a single social media post declaring that Kyiv could take all its territory back. And separately, in a meeting with Arab and Muslim leaders, he said Israel should not be allowed to annex the occupied West Bank when the US seem poised to give it the green light.
When it was time to address world leaders at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, he criticised them for seeking to combat climate change and pursuing lax immigration policies. The lengthy tirade has drawn comparisons to speeches delivered at the UN by the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro in 1960 and the late Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi in 2009.
“The difference is Gaddafi was irrelevant and Donald Trump isn’t,” says Jon Alterman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Of Trump’s unpredictable, ever-shifting approach to foreign policy, Alterman says: “He’s much more comfortable with disorder than all the people around him and he uses that as a superpower. Nobody’s exactly sure where he’s trying to go, but everybody also thinks he can be brought over to their side.”
Rewarded
At the White House, officials are confident that Trump is in a strong position and will be rewarded for fulfilling many of his key promises.
“Even the fake news cannot deny that president Trump has had his foot on the gas since day one, when he signed a litany of executive orders to secure our border, restore sanity against woke nonsense, unleash American energy and end America’s era of economic surrender on global trade,” said Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson. “The pace has never slowed and president Trump is committed to running at full steam until he finally restores American greatness.”
But there are signs of some unease in his coalition – even from unexpected quarters.
Texas senator Ted Cruz, who challenged Trump for the 2016 Republican nomination but has since embraced the president, has taken issue with White House pressure on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the media regulator, to clamp down on political and even satirical dissent. Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed FCC chair, has publicly criticised Kimmel’s comments about Kirk and suggested the network’s licences could be removed.
“I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying,” Cruz said on his podcast.
On Wednesday, Senate majority leader John Thune also questioned the FCC chair’s rhetoric and the president’s threats to ABC.
This thing is a complete political hatchet job and I think it’s going to blow up in the Trump administration’s face
— Senator Tim Kaine
“As a general matter, my view is that the government ought to stay out of the free speech marketplace unless there are clear violations that violate laws that are in place to protect the American people,” Thune told CNN. “I think that any decisions that are made with respect to programming ought to be made by the companies.”
Thune also took issue with the administration’s new advice about acetaminophen. “I think science ought to guide these discussions and our decision-making around our health . . . I think there are an awful lot of people in the medical community who come to a different conclusion about the use of Tylenol,” he said.
Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor, called on the US Department of Health and Human Services to release data to support its claims.
“The concern is that women will be left with no options to manage pain in pregnancy. We must be compassionate to this problem,” he wrote on X.
But when it came to Comey’s indictment, there were scant critics within the Republican party. “James Comey was not indicted because Donald Trump doesn’t like him. Comey demonstrated complete arrogance and unwillingness to comply with the law,” Cruz wrote on X on Thursday night.
Democrats, however, believe the Comey indictment is a clear case of over-reach that will have political consequences. “This thing is a complete political hatchet job and I think it’s going to blow up in the Trump administration’s face,” Tim Kaine, the Democratic Virginia senator, said. Comey has said he is innocent and is looking forward to a trial.
The Comey prosecution may only be the beginning. The Department of Justice is already investigating John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, and the president has warned that law enforcement will be targeting a vast network of left-wing groups and individuals. In the Oval Office on Thursday evening, he named “Soros” – an apparent reference to George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund investor – and Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, as next on the list. “I hear names of some pretty rich people that are radical left people,” Trump said.
The fact of the matter is Republicans and their strategists do not believe any kind of tipping point has been reached yet, one where Republican voters and lawmakers lose faith in Trump and try to distance themselves from him.
“There are areas where they will find disagreement with Trump, but those are not cracks in support for Trump. Not at all,” says Heye, the Republican strategist.
Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, says Trump has been losing some support among independents and his negative ratings on handling the economy and trade are a “problem”.
“He was elected basically for four reasons: to bring down inflation, to juice the economy, to stop illegal immigration, to get away from woke culture. Any slippage on the first two runs very much against why people voted for him to be president again,” Ayres says.
Trump allies are also bracing for more potential fallout from the clamour on Capitol Hill to release more information about government investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, the late disgraced financier.
With the election this week of Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat, in a special election in Arizona, lawmakers Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, and Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie now have the critical 218 signatures for a “discharge petition” that will force a vote in the House on disclosing federal files related to Epstein. The vote is expected to pass given a critical number of Republican lawmakers have joined Democrats in calling for transparency in the case, which will pile more pressure on Trump.
But any new drama over Epstein could be diluted by the possibility of a government shutdown as early as Wednesday. Trump seems to be gearing up for a fight now, after he scrapped a meeting with Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer to find a way to keep the government open.
“We are so divided now and people are so partisan in their viewpoints, I am inclined to say that people will simply blame the other party regardless,” says Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist in Florida.
Trump expects that he will handily prevail in any stand-off with Schumer and Jeffries over the shutdown. “The Democrats are crazed, they don’t know what they’re doing,” the US president told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, sporting his usual bravado. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
