Right Wing Round-Up: Secretary of Retribution

Trump’s loyal surrogates have duly embraced the project — perhaps no one more zealously than Ivan Raiklin, a retired Army Reserve lieutenant colonel and former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency employee, who bills himself as the former and would-be president’s “future secretary of retribution.”

Donald Trump’s attempt to distance himself from Project 2025 after extreme comments from one of its leaders falls flat given the extensive Trump ties and similarities between the project’s policy ideas and the former president’s platform.

Since Mr. Trump left office in 2021, Mar-a-Lago has transformed into a White House in exile and the nerve center for some of the most extreme elements of the party’s MAGA wing. This includes a nearly steady stream of promoters of conspiracy theories that include lies that the 2020 election was stolen and that the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, was a federal setup.

Last month, at a far-right conference, Christian nationalist author Stephen Wolfe denounced the term “Judeo-Christian” as an “utter subversion” that should be “eradicated from our thinking.” He also claimed that, in a “Christian nation,” Jews would be “tolerated” but actions that “undermine” the “Christian nature of the nation” would not.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell made his case for being put “in charge” of elections in a second Trump administration during an appearance on the War Room podcast Tuesday.

For much of his public life, Trewhella has made a career of denouncing the law while railing against abortion and gun restrictions. Twenty years ago, that made him a political pariah. His reputation for blockading abortion clinics, calling for churches to form militias and defending the murder of abortion providers was so extreme that two state chapters of Right to Life, the anti-abortion group, condemned him. But today, the world has changed. He has been invited to speak by local Republican parties and other groups across the country. He gave a prayer breakfast sermon to one of the nation’s preeminent law enforcement associations. And a prolific booster of election conspiracy theories has used his work as the basis for a campaign to disrupt elections.