Don Jr. sounds awful, with "There is a little bit of sweet revenge in it for me and certainly, probably, the family"...

... but if the biggest problem with the Nunes memo was that it isolated a few things out of context, then you ought to want to hear the whole context that contains that one juicy remark.



Jr. begins with, "What if Bush had done this to Obama?," which is a great question, calling us to think in neutral objective terms — the polar opposite of thinking about "revenge" for "the family."

He develops the idea that the investigation has always been corrupt, and when Jesse Watters asks him if "it's always been rotten to the core," Don Jr. says:

It always has been. We always said that. It is so ridiculous that — let it go though. The real problem I have with it — other than millions in legal fees and lots of time wasted and being smeared throughout the media for years — at least they uncovered this — what if they wouldn't have? If they would have just let it go at this point — I mean — there is a little bit of sweet revenge in it for me and certainly, probably for the family in the sense that if they wouldn't have done this, this stuff would be going on. This would be going on at the highest levels of government. They'd be continuing to do it to my father, trying to undermine his actions. Imagine how effective he could be — given the year he's had — without this cloud over his head. So I want them to come — but come to a conclusion already because you've been looking for 2 years. You've come up with nothing other than their own nefarious actions and their own collusions. So at this point, you've gotta come to something. Just come to something. Because, if they try to drag it out for a year, they try to drag it so that the Democrats have their talking points. I watch it right now. You see the Democratic Senators — "This is McCarthyism" — I'm like — "What?!" You have a guy that's been screaming "Russia! Russia! Russia!" with no evidence, obvious collusion — all this shade — for 18 months, screaming about McCarthyism? The irony is ridiculous at this point.

"Revenge" was a terribly bad word choice for him there — especially alongside "the family." (And it didn't help that he mispronounced "nefarious" so that it began with the first 2 syllables of "Neapolitan.")

And he does string a lot of ideas together in a casual speech style that's a lot like his father's. This can be confusing, especially when the word "it" flies by. A little bit of sweet revenge in what?

Trump antagonists are going to see the popping out of the word "revenge" as highly significant. It resonates with the idea that Trump doesn't understand the proper functioning of law and government but views the presidency as a realm of personal power. It reminds them of Trump's continual insinuations about "loyalty." Don Jr. jabbered a lot of words, but that one word — revenge! — revealed the nasty inner workings of the Trump family.

To Trump fans, "revenge" will seem like an odd word that feels diluted by all the other words. It was immediately moderated by the phrase "in the sense that" and all that followed. You can see that Don Jr. feels that he and his father have been terribly mistreated (and prevented from doing even more of their good works) and those terrible Democrats might easily have gotten away with their nefarious plot against the President.

But I think even in the Trump-sympathetic reading, there's a revelation of how Trump talks about himself behind the scenes, that he feels beleaguered and must fight for his life in a battle of good and evil. I want to balance that by saying that I think many of his opponents also seem to see themselves as fighters in an epic battle between good and evil.

I wonder why someone who goes on television in a hot political environment isn't more guarded in the choice of words. How do you let a word like "revenge" slip out? I have to think that Don Jr. is like his father, trusts his instincts, and believes that things will work out best if you let the words flow out spontaneously. People — not all people, but some people — will feel that you're speaking from your heart and are a real person and that even if you're flawed, you're basically a good person or will at least let us see where you are bad. Donald Trump Sr. has said so many things the wrong way, and it sometimes seems incredible that he sails on through, but I think we — many of us, not all of us — have a taste for word salad.

Revenge is one spicy ingredient in a word salad best served cold.