Is Trump's payback tour blowing over the Atlantic? 

During the final weeks of the 2024 US presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump had a special message for voters: a promise of revenge and retribution.

At rallies across the country Trump vowed to root out “the enemy from within” and said he would even use the military to go after his political opponents, perceived or real.

In his words: “Those involved in unscrupulous behaviour will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our country.”

It seems Trump, who began his second term as the only convicted felon ever to occupy the White House (following fraud charges related to hush money payments to a porn star), believes the time for punishing “unscrupulous behaviour” has come.

And this involves first and foremost those who crossed Trump in public – in the US and maybe in Europe.

“We are certainly seeing an intensity of retribution from Trump that didn’t exist before,” Sudha David-Wilp, a senior fellow and vice president of the German Marshall Fund, a global think tank, told Euronews.

And this after purging the federal government and the military of perceived enemies and after going after universities, media outlets, cultural institutions even sport teams.

“The question is how much bending the US system can sustain under Trump,” David-Wilp added.

Last week, the FBI raided the home and office of former Trump national security adviser John Bolton – apparently as part of a criminal investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information.

Bolton had emerged as a frequent outspoken critic of Trump after being fired in 2019 and fought with the first Trump administration over an explosive memoir he wrote about his time in the White House. A book whose publication Trump tried to stop.

Bolton, who served for two years as US ambassador to the United Nations in the George W. Bush administration, did not seem to be intimidated. Just days after the raid, he unleashed a damaging assessment of Trump’s Ukraine policy.

"Collapsing in confusion, haste, and the absence of any discernible meeting of the minds among Ukraine, Russia, several European countries, and America, Trump’s negotiations may be in their last throes, along with his Nobel Peace Prize campaign," Bolton wrote in an op-ed published in the Washington Examiner, a conservative news magazine.

Trump reacted with angry social media posts and then suggested that the timing of the raid was pure coincidence and that he had nothing to do with it.

The same pattern emerged in the case of Chris Christie.

Trump revives 'Bridgegate'

The former governor of New Jersey was one of the first Republican establishment figures to endorse Trump in the latter’s unlikely presidential bid in 2016 and even became the chair of Trump’s transition team.

But that was then. During Trump’s first term, Christie and the untested president had a massive falling out, accusing each other of being totally incompetent.

After the Bolton raid Christie went on national television and criticized Trump for turning the Justice Department into his own retaliation hit squad.

“It’s kind of funny to hear the president talk the way he does about Bolton and classified information, yet when he had the classified information, the same rules didn't apply," Christie said on ABC News.

Again, Trump was furious. He is now threatening to launch another federal investigation into “Bridgegate”, a scandal that rocked the political world in 2013 when Christie was governor.

It grew from the closing of two local lanes to the George Washington Bridge spanning the Hudson River west of Manhattan for a five-day stretch. A move that caused paralyzing traffic backups on the New Jersey side, allegedly to punish a local mayor for refusing to back Christie’s re-election.

Two close Christie subordinates had to stand trial, but the convictions were later overturned by the Supreme Court. Christie himself was exonerated, yet he could never really wash away the political stench of the scandal.

Trump was never interested in “Bridgegate”. Until now.

“Chris refused to take responsibility for these criminal acts,” Trump posted after Christie’s recent TV interview. “For the sake of JUSTICE, perhaps we should start looking at that very serious situation again? NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW!”

Trump put other harsh critics on notice that there will be a price to pay for crossing him in public. It may come in the form of an actual investigation, as with Bolton, or threat of one looming, as with Christie.

Earlier in August, Trump’s Justice Department launched probes of two of his most outspoken legal adversaries: California Democratic senator Adam Schiff, who led the House of Representatives’ first impeachment inquiry of Trump in 2019, and New York attorney general Letitia James, whose office successfully prosecuted Trump in a civil-fraud case.

Last week, Trump fired Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook whose monetary policy ideas don’t align with the president’s.

In all three cases, the administration used mortgage filings as weapons against its foes, suggesting James, Schiff and Cook had lied to lenders to get favourable loans.

Long list of Democrats on Tramp's Wanted list

There is a long list of Democrats who are on Trump’s Wanted list, from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to former top military and intelligence officials as well as practically anybody who publicly disagreed with him.

In a now-infamous Truth Social post in July, he shared an AI-generated video of Barack Obama being handcuffed by FBI agents and dragged out of the Oval Office.

Trump has many political adversaries in the United States – but what about Europe? Does the separation of a large ocean protect former and current EU and national government officials from Trump’s wrath?

Asked about possible concerns about a European Trump vendetta, the EU Commission declined to comment.

“These are pure speculations,” a Commission spokeswoman told Euronews.

Speculation perhaps, but not unwarranted.

Two weeks ago, the Trump administration announced sanctions on two judges and two prosecutors of the Hague-based International Criminal Court for prosecuting Americans and Israelis.

It’s just the latest in a series of steps Trump has taken to weaken the court.

Meanwhile, Trump’s attacks keep coming.

Last week, his ambassador in Paris stunned the French political class by publicly accusing the government, seemingly out of the blue, of inaction against rising antisemitism.

Ambassador Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared and a convicted felon prosecuted by Chris Christie, then ignored a summons to the French foreign ministry to explain himself – and, probably, to hear a dressing down.

The move came days after French president Emmanuel Macron announced his readiness to recognize Palestine as a state – a position that Trump is adamantly opposed to.

Days later, Trump threatened to impose sanctions on EU or member state officials responsible for implementing the bloc's landmark Digital Services Act (DSA) over US complaints that the law censors Americans and imposes costs on US tech companies.

Such a move would be an unprecedented action that would escalate the Trump administration's fight against what it sees as Europe's attempt to suppress conservative voices.

The European Commission strongly denied these allegations. A spokesperson added that the last three DSA enforcement decisions were against AliExpress, Temu and TikTok - all Chinese-owned.

Trump could sanction individuals with visa restrictions or other penalties, according to experts.

“People could see their assets in the US frozen or their names put on international Wanted lists from which it is difficult to be removed,” Sven Biscop, professor at Ghent University and at the Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations, told Euronews.

Breton outspoken on Trump White House

“It’s scary. Trump is trying to impose his version of the truth. Not even the Chinese do that,” he added.

One individual in Trump’s crosshairs could be former EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager under whose authority the EU took a tough stance against US tech giants like Google, Facebook or Apple.

During a first term interview with Fox Business Network, Trump said about Vestager that she “hates the United States perhaps worse than any person I’ve ever met”.

Another outspoken Trump critic is former EU internal market commissioner and French Economy Minister Thierry Breton.

In an Op-ed in a British newspaper this week he sharply attacked the EU-US trade deal and warned against further humiliation and instability, if Brussels doesn’t push back against Trump’s attempts to go after Europe’s tech regulations.

Trump’s allies in the US Congress “invited” Breton to testify before a committee next week, which Breton publicly declined. Watch this space!

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also been caught in Trump's crosshairs in the past.

In her memoir “Freedom” which was published in 2024, three years after leaving office, Merkel notes that Trump targeted her and Germany in his successful 2016 campaign, claiming that her welcoming of more than a million refugees had “ruined” Germany and accusing Berlin of free-riding on US military investment.

She also said that her first mistake with Trump was treating him “as if he were completely normal”.

Could Merkel be sanctioned by Trump? Or her successor Olaf Scholz who clashed with Trump over the latter’s support for the right-wing AfD party prior to the German elections in February?

We will find out as Trump’s revenge tour continues.