Former President Donald Trump’s threatening rhetoric about seeking retribution against those he perceives have wronged him should be taken at face value, a former attorney in the Trump White House warned.
“I think there should be concern,” Ty Cobb told NBC News in an article published Monday.
“From a 30,000-foot view, what I see is Trump angrier now than he was before because he is convicted now,” Cobb explained, referencing the presumptive GOP presidential nominee’s ramping up of his talk of revenge — if he wins back the presidency in November’s election ― after a jury found him guilty on all 34 charges in his hush money trial last month.
Trump will be sentenced in that case on July 11, just four days before the start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“Even Hannity recognized that this was dangerous territory and tried to reel him in,” said Cobb, recalling Fox News personality Sean Hannity’s unsuccessful effort to temper Trump’s commentary during their interview that aired last week.
But “Trump would have none of it,” Cobb noted.
“Look, when this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them,” Trump told Hannity of his political enemies.
Hannity has frequently stumped for Trump on his widely-watched prime-time Fox show and once actually campaigned on stage alongside the ex-POTUS.
Trump made similarly-themed comments about settling scores to Phil McGraw, aka former TV therapist Dr. Phil, also last week when he argued that “sometimes revenge can be justified.”
Cobb, who has become a vocal critic of Trump, in February cautioned that his onetime boss may indeed attempt to get back at President Joe Biden should he win the 2024 election and return to the Oval Office.
Trump has repeatedly baselessly claimed that Biden and his administration is behind the criminal cases against him.
“I do believe that if Trump is elected that President Biden could be in danger of retribution,” Cobb told CNN’s Erin Burnett at the time.
Cobb, though, said he didn’t “believe there’s a legal basis for it, and I don’t think it would go very far.”
To NBC News this week, Cobb said the checks and balances of government should prevent Trump from getting his way, given that “he has to get people to carry” his orders out.