How Trump used his first week to exact political retribution

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

64% : On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order directing his Justice Department and Office of the Director of National Intelligence to open broad investigations into Biden administration "weaponization" of law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
51% : With actions big and small, Trump has spent his first days in office pushing the levers of government - and his unique powers as commander in chief - to target his perceived political enemies both inside and outside the government.
43% : "Trump used his first batch of executive actions signed on the first day of his presidency to begin his retribution tour.
43% : Trump wrote.
39% : "Trump also took actions to reshape the federal workforce - both as part of his campaign to weed out the so-called "deep state" from inside the government and to target federal employees who focus on diversity, equity and inclusion.
39% : "Early Tuesday morning, Trump posted on his Truth Social account that he was removing four individuals from presidential advisory boards: José Andrés, the celebrity chef and restaurateur; former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley; former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms; and Brian Hook, a top State Department official in the first Trump administration who was at one point expected to lead Trump's State transition team.
39% : Trump also issued an order pardoning more than 1,000 people charged in the Capitol attack -- the most sweeping action in his long-running effort to rewrite the history of January 6 and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, which had led to now-dropped federal charges against him brought by former special counsel Jack Smith.
37% : Now in office, Trump has kept up the same rhetoric, even if some of his targets received a preemptive pardon from Biden.
35% : Trump tacked on another former national security official in the order: It also revoked the clearance of his former national security adviser John Bolton over a memoir about his time at the National Security Council that was deeply critical of the president - which the first Trump administration investigated for the potential inclusion of classified material.
34% : It's still too early to say how much Trump's desire for political retribution will color his second term - and whether he will in fact push for far more drastic actions inside the Justice Department once his team is confirmed.
31% : But Trump also made sure to use his newly regained bully pulpit to personally announce the firings of several critics by "Truth.
30% : Included among them: Trump revoked the security clearances of the 51 former intelligence officials who signed a 2020 letter arguing that emails from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden carried "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.
29% : "I was going to talk about the things that Joe did today with the pardons of people that were very, very guilty of very bad crimes, like the Unselect Committee of political thugs," Trump said of the January 6 committee in remarks following his inaugural address.
29% : Of course, if Trump actually directed his Justice Department to investigate Biden, he would face a key roadblock because of his own legal battles last year: The Supreme Court ruled in Trump's challenge to the special counsel's January 6 indictment that presidents have "absolute immunity" related to their official actions.
28% : They can hire their own security too," Trump said Friday while touring storm damage in North Carolina.
28% : I mean, the money went to him," Trump said, repeating never-proven allegations that Republicans investigated in the last Congress about Biden receiving money from his family members' business ventures.
27% : "I went through four years of hell by this scum that we had to deal with," Trump said.
24% : During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly suggested that his perceived enemies should be jailed, from the prosecutors in the Biden administration Justice Department who indicted him to members of the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
21% : Asked whether he would feel partially responsible if something were to happen to Fauci or Bolton, Trump said no."They all made a lot of money.
17% : There was no reason Trump needed to announce the firings himself - Andrés even responded by saying that he'd already submitted his resignation before Trump was sworn in.
13% : Trump went after Bolton in another way within hours of his swearing in, terminating his Secret Service detail, which has been assigned to him because of threats from Iran.
11% : (Trump initially terminated his protection after he left his administration in the first term, but Biden restored it once he took office.)Trump also revoked the security detail for his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who like Bolton, also received protection due to threats from Iran.
4% : Still, Trump made a show of going after some of his vocal critics, like Milley, who called Trump a "fascist to the core" ahead of the 2024 election.

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