There are many reasons to fear a Trump restoration. If Donald Trump were back in the White House and another pandemic struck (or the current one persists), the results could again be disastrous. Under a second Trump presidency, the modest steps now being taken to address the climate crisis would be killed, and more precious time wasted. The already extensive Republican efforts to undermine democracy by suppressing voting rights and rigging the vote-counting system would likely intensify. The Supreme Court could become more reactionary, with reproductive rights further threatened. Of course, there would be no efforts to address economic and social inequities. In addition to all this, there is another cause for worry: revenge.

As I’ve repeatedly noted, the top three motivations for Trump in many, if not most, situations are: revenge, revenge, and revenge. (See here, here, and here.) He lives for vengeance. This psychological compulsion might stretch back to his childhood, but certainly as an adult, when he was not fully accepted into Manhattan society, he developed a two-ton chip on his shoulder. It’s long been hypothesized that Trump entered the 2016 presidential contest—after years of flirting with a White House bid and retreating—to get even with Barack Obama, after the 44th president roasted him at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

Whether or not the humiliation Trump suffered that night propelled him to run, he himself has often said that revenge is much of what drives him. In speeches before becoming president, Trump frequently revealed his fondness for retribution. In 2011, he addressed the National Achievers Congress in Sydney, Australia, to explain his business acumen. He shared several lessons not taught in business school. At the top of the list was this piece of advice: “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.”

This was a mantra for Trump. As he said in another speech, “When you’re in business, you get even with people that screw you. And you screw them 15 times harder.”

During his presidency, Trump frequently demonstrated his vindictive streak. He turned on aides and advisers once they left his service, particularly if they dared criticize him. (It seems that so many of the people he hired were, according to Trump, dunces.) He feuded with John McCain after the senator was dead. During the pandemic, he threatened not to provide ventilators to states with governors who were not nice to him. This is a man who bear-hugs grudges. He almost got his vice president lynched.

Should Trump ever return to the White House, he would be like Michael Corleone settling scores. It’s not hyperbolic to suggest that he would devote much, if not most, of his time as president in pursuit of his foes, real or imagined. This time, he would make sure to load the Justice Department with lieutenants eager and willing to chase after Trump’s antagonists and targets. Hunter Biden, watch out. Ditto for anyone involved with the investigations of the Trump-Russia scandal. Trump’s enemies list would be huge: Republicans who did not champion his Big Lie about the 2020 election, foreign leaders who turned their back on him, Big Tech officials who deplatformed him, and officials who participated in criminal probes of his actions. (Look at how he keeps raging at Sen. Mitch McConnell.) Even more than he did regarding Obama, Trump would look to undo Joe Biden’s accomplishments. A new Trump term would be far more id-driven than the first.

What are the odds Trump gets the keys back to 1600 Pennsylvania? It’s hard to assess. But it’s a realistic possibility. Should Trump run—and there’s no telling yet if he will, though he has been preparing a campaign operation—he would be a frontrunner for the GOP nomination, even after his inept handling of the COVID crisis led to the preventable deaths of some 400,000 Americans and his promotion of lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 vote count sparked a violent attack on the US Capitol. Recent history shows that anybody can win an election under the right circumstances.

The latest polling on Biden and his policies are a warning sign. As the New York Times’ Nate Cohn pointed out, the president’s policy proposals are popular, but Biden’s own approval ratings are deflated. And this comes at a time when the nation is in a better spot than a year ago, despite inflation and labor market shortages. (Wasn’t your 2021 Thanksgiving better than the last one?) Yet Biden is receiving no love for the recent job growth, his administration’s effective delivery of vaccines, the enactment of the massive bipartisan infrastructure bill, or his efforts to pass paid family leave, universal pre-K, and other much-desired programs. “In poll after poll, voters seem to give Mr. Biden no credit for his agenda,” Cohn writes, “They say he hasn’t accomplished much. They even say he hasn’t helped them personally, even though he sent direct stimulus payments to most households and even more to parents. If anything, voters say he’s made things worse.”

An electorate this fickle—and highly attuned to a sense of disappointment or frustration—could do anything. Even bring back Trump. But Trump need not move back into the White House to extract many pounds of flesh. The Republicans have a good shot at taking the House in a year and, possibly, the Senate, too. If that happens, a million investigations will bloom. The six Benghazi hearings mounted by House Republicans will look modest in retrospect. Trump will demand his cultists launch multiple inquiries that aim to buttress his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. He will call for probes of assorted conspiracy theories: Ukraine has the Democratic National Committee computer servers, China leaked the coronavirus on purpose, Italian spies used satellites to change the 2020 results. (Mike Lindell and other crazies will likely be advising him.) It will be open season on those people Trump sees as his Deep State enemies. Hillary Clinton, look out. With the GOP still under his smaller-than-average thumb, Trump’s fact-free obsessions will become the official agenda of Republican-controlled congressional committees.

This picture can get worse. A few days ago, Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s final White House chief of staff, suggested that if House Republicans gain control of the House, they should select Trump to be speaker. (A House speaker need not be a member of the House.) What do you think Trump’s priorities as speaker would be? Pandemic prevention? Infrastructure? It will be revenge, revenge, and revenge.

Doom-forecasting is easy to engage in these days. But those who predicted that a Trump presidency would be a disaster were on the money. A resurgence of Trump power—through a Republican win in 2022 or a Trump victory two years later—could be worse. Which is why it’s not too early to ponder this possible nightmare.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com.

The Watch, Read, and Listen List

The Beatles: Get Back. Imagine being able to watch Ludwig van Beethoven sitting at a piano and plinking away: “Da, Da, Dee, Dum?...Nein, nein, nein….Da, Dee, Dee, Dum? Nein!....Da, Da, Da Dum….Ja, Ja, JAH!” The new and amazing documentary The Beatles: Get Back is a modern-day equivalent. Peter Jackson, who directed the Lord of the Rings films, got his mitts on 60 hours of videotape and 150 hours of audio from the Beatles recording session in early 1969 that led to the Let It Be album, the last record the band released, and an accompanying film of the same name, and he has produced a three-part series that is one of the best documentaries ever made. If the goal of documentary filmmaking is to transport the viewer into a world he or she would otherwise not know, it is hard to envision a more successful outing. For more than seven hours, we are in the room with the Fab Four as they create music and contend with the internal and external conflicts that come with being the most famous and sought-after human beings in the world. This is one of the most voyeuristic experiences you will ever have. It almost feels obscene, as we watch and listen to John, Paul, George, and Ringo work out their songs and their shit. The degree of intimacy Jackson creates is shocking. At times, it is painful to watch.

There is so much tension within the band. (At one point, George quits the Beatles and walks out, saying, “See you 'round the clubs.” But he does return.) A year after the death of Brian Epstein, the group’s manager, Paul strives to take on the role of a father figure who can impose discipline upon the lads so they can, within the three weeks allotted, create the album and television show they have agreed to produce. John, with Yoko Ono never more than inches from his side, arrives in what appears to be a strung-out state; he is highly unfocused. George bristles at Paul’s efforts to impose his vision of the under-construction songs on the rest of the band. And Ringo is just eager to go along. (One lovely moment occurs when Ringo gazes at Paul at the piano and sweetly and sincerely says that the TV show they have yet to sort out should be just Paul at the keyboard for an hour.) It seems as if this is the end of the Beatles. And the original Let It Be film emphasized this swan-song narrative.

But then...magic happens. After the boys convince George to return, they settle into the daunting task at hand. And the music comes together. The unfinished tunes Paul and John have brought in take form, while George contributes ready-to-record numbers. The process is helped by the appearance of keyboardist Billy Preston, who drops by to say hello and is recruited to become the fifth Beatle for this project. And we watch as the band transforms bits and pieces of songs into what will become iconic music: “Let It Be,” “Get Back,” “Across the Universe,” “Two of Us,” and more. It is fascinating to be looking over their shoulders as the Beatles engage in the artistic process shaped by assorted psychological dynamics and external demands. (The idea of a television show is canned, but will there be a public performance at the end of all this?)

As the band bears down, there is joy, silliness, camaraderie, and productivity. They work well together, calling out chords, testing lyrics, and crafting arrangements. In a way, it’s what every garage band has ever done. (“You go from the E to G...Do the verse twice, then the lead.”) Except it’s the Beatles doing it. What’s most heartening is not only do they succeed; they enjoy it. You can see it on their faces when they crowd into the control room to listen to the playback. They evince pride and pleasure, as if to say, “We still got it.” And they do.

The documentary series, only available on Disney+ (I signed up to watch), ends with the legendary Beatles performance on a rooftop in downtown London. The band runs through several songs before the bobbies shut them down for “disturbing the peace.” After years of being only in-studio musicians, they relish playing before an audience, as limited as it is. And there’s a payoff: Each number is an improvement on the version they had rehearsed and recorded in the studio. It is a reminder—for them and those watching—of their thrilling days as in-person entertainers who wowed their way from obscurity to global celebrity. We now know this was the last time John, Paul, George, and Ringo would perform in public as the Beatles. Did they have an inkling of that at the time? After the abbreviated concert, they repair to the control room to listen to the recordings of the rooftop gig, and producer George Martin says that was a “very good dry run” for another and fuller show. He was right, but that was not to be.

Tick, tick...BOOM! Jonathan Larson’s tale is one of triumph and tragedy. After many years of striving within the world of musical theater, he wrote Rent, the La Bohéme–inspired musical about struggling artists and bohos living in New York City in the early era of AIDS. It would become a Broadway smash and earn a Pulitzer and three Tony Awards. But Larson never got to bask. He died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm the day Rent was to have its first preview performance off-Broadway. The show went on.

I knew Larson. We both attended White Plains High School. He was a grade behind me. We were not close. He was a theater kid, and I was not. He was an amiable young man who inhabited a world that looked rather geeky to me. But he was popular within that crowd, and it’s easy to see why: His passion was evident and infectious for his collaborators in the school musicals. Netflix’s Tick, tick...BOOM!, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda (the genius of Hamilton), captures and celebrates the double edges of that passion. It is a musical based on a “rock monologue” Larson wrote before Rent about his troubles trying to produce a futuristic musical he'd penned called Superbia. The movie is a loving portrait of a young, anxious, impoverished, and frustrated artist who is about to turn 30, who has spent years toiling on a show he can’t sell, and who does not—and cannot—know if all his effort and sacrifice are worth it. The autobiographical Larson character in Tick, tick...BOOM! is brimming with talent; he can write a song about anything. But is his drive to be an artist a curse? The movie has songs from Superbia and songs by Larson about his life as the composer of the unproduced Superbia. (He’s living downtown in a crappy apartment, working at a diner, and watching friends dying of AIDS.) Will he give up his dream? You know the answer. Superbia never flies. But—and here’s the moral of the story—it leads to his next project: Rent. Larson’s real-life story was more complicated. But Miranda is sending out a message to all theater geeks: persist. Larson reached the pantheon of musical theater but, sadly, without ever knowing he did. One striking feature of Tick, tick...BOOM!—in which Andrew Garfield puts in a stunning and award-worthy performance as Larson—is that it shows that Rent was superior to Superbia. With all his trying, trying, trying—and failure—Larson got better. And that was when he succeeded.

Read Recent Issues of This Land

November 23, 2021: How dangerous is Peter Thiel?; No Time to Die as a daddy-daughter film; spending time with Nick Offerman; Aimee Mann’s fabulous new album; and more.

November 20, 2021: Should the Democrats really push the panic button?; the Steele dossier and Donald Trump’s betrayal of America; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

November 16, 2021: New information on how Donald Trump killed 400,000 (or more) Americans; Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. on the witness stand in a Trump corruption trial?; American Rust shines with Jeff Daniels; Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp face the final song; and more.

November 13, 2021: Does blue-state America care more about red-state America than vice versa?; Dumbass Comment of the Week; how to get back issues of This Land; the Mailbag, MoxieCam™; and more.

November 9, 2021: Why an ex-Trump aide just told me to “burn in hell”; Matt Damon’s compassionate portrayal of a screw-up from Trump Country; behind the scenes at the Beatles’ Let It Be sessions; and more.

November 6, 2021: The Democrats’ anger problem; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

November 2, 2021: Whatever happened to Christian Nationalism and the January 6 attack?; thoughts and prayers for COP26; Rock ’n’ Roll Flashback: Bob Dylan, Jesus, and me; and more.

October 30, 2021: Is it time to use the F-word for Fox?; how politics really works; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more

October 26, 2021: How ABC News just helped Donald Trump; the GOP’s big con in Virginia; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Special Edition); new music from Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats and from The War on Drugs; and more.