By Don Terry | Tuesday, November 18, 2025 | 4 min read
Saying that Donald Trump treats the Justice Department like a personal attack dog is almost too polite. At this point, it has become a ritual: he snaps his fingers, mutters something about “going after” an opponent, and suddenly the DOJ is expected—at least in Trump’s mind—to move as if summoned by command. The whole thing feels less like a legal process and more like programming one of Elon Musk’s humanoid robots. Press a button. Assign a task. Expect blind obedience. That’s not how a constitutional democracy works, but it’s how Trump wants people to believe it works. And that alone should worry everyone, whether they’re on the left, right, or somewhere in between.
What often goes unsaid is the deeper message behind Trump’s posture. His public demands are not just about the person he wants targeted in that moment. They’re signals, warnings, even instructions to whoever sits in the Oval Office after him—particularly if that president happens to be a Democrat. The lesson is simple and corrosive: This is the new normal. I used the machinery of the state to settle scores. Now you can, too. In other words, Trump isn’t just stretching presidential power; he’s daring future leaders to adopt his methods. If his conduct becomes precedent—if it becomes normalized—every president will inherit a template for retaliatory governance.
Imagine what that looks like. Every losing side becomes the subject of inquiry. Every political dispute is treated like a legal case. Every election comes with the expectation that the winners can—and should—weaponize the Justice Department against the losers. Instead of a system designed to curb the excesses of power, we get one that invites them.
This temptation reaches the judiciary as well. Some of Trump’s critics on the left have been vocal about what they see as ethical problems involving certain conservative Supreme Court Justices. Justice Clarence Thomas is often the name invoked, though he and his supporters vigorously deny wrongdoing. But the specifics almost matter less than the political environment Trump is cultivating.
Once a president demonstrates—loudly, proudly—that it is acceptable to use federal power against perceived adversaries, he practically hands the next administration a blueprint. It becomes easier to imagine a Democratic White House feeling justified in investigating conservative judges, or a Republican one targeting liberal justices, not because the facts demand it but because the cycle of revenge has become normalized.
And that is the true danger. Not just what Trump is doing, but what he is teaching the country to expect. He models a presidency where law enforcement is not a guardian of justice but a lever of power. A presidency where the DOJ exists not to enforce the law but to enforce loyalty. A presidency where courts aren’t institutions to be respected but obstacles to be bent or bulldozed. He turns the constitutional role of the executive branch—carefully limited, deliberately constrained—into something more like a command center where personal grievances take the shape of federal action.
If that mindset takes hold, we lose more than norms. We lose trust. We lose the belief that justice is blind, that the law applies to everyone equally, that the institutions meant to protect us are not simply weapons waiting for the next hand to wield them.
This is why the image of Trump treating the DOJ like a programmable robot is so unsettling. Robots don’t question orders. They don’t weigh ethics or precedent or consequences. They don’t recognize lines that shouldn’t be crossed. And if Trump sees the Justice Department that way, then the rest of us should be terrified of what happens when the next president—Republican or Democrat—gets their hands on the controls.
Because once the machinery of government is taught to obey whoever holds the power switch, it becomes very hard to remind it what justice was ever supposed to look like in the first place.
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