Let's Make A Deal, Or Something

Yet another indication over the weekend that Trump's Twitter tirade on the Wisconsin audit/recount is part of a larger plan as Trump transition team members spread out over the Sunday shows to imply that by supporting such an audit, Hillary Clinton will face consequences.

Donald Trump's incoming chief of staff suggests Hillary Clinton is backing away from a deal worked out between the two presidential campaigns on how the loser would concede to the winner.

Reince Priebus tells "Fox News Sunday" that Clinton's team "cut a deal" with Trump's team specifying that once The Associated Press called the race in favor of one candidate, the other would call within 15 minutes to concede.

Priebus says that's just what happened election night.

But now he's questioning whether Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias is backing down from that deal by announcing Clinton will participate in a recount in Wisconsin and may do the same in Michigan and Pennsylvania. The push is being led by the Green Party's Jill Stein.

AP's director of media relations, Lauren Easton, says AP "calls races when it is clear that one candidate has prevailed over the other. We have no knowledge of what the candidates do with that information until there is a public claim of victory or a concession."

Clinton "broke a deal", which by itself doesn't mean much more than posturing.  But combined with other Trump camp people on the Sunday shows, it demonstrates a pattern.  Take Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway on CNN's State of the Union talking about Trump's plans to prosecute Hillary Clinton in the future:

CONWAY: And so he said he wouldn’t rule it out. He said it’s just not his focus right now. I think he’s being quite magnanimous and at the same time he’s not undercutting at all the authority and the autonomy of the Department of Justice, of the FBI, of the House Committees, who knows where the evidence may lead if, in fact, it were — if the investigation were re-opened somewhere.

But this is the president-elect’s position right now and I would say he has been incredibly gracious and magnanimous to Secretary Clinton at a time when for whatever reason her folks are saying they will join in a recount to try to somehow undo the 70 plus electoral votes that he beat her by. I mean this — you know, I was asked on CNN and elsewhere, goodness a thousand times, will Donald Trump accept the election results? And now you’ve got the Democrats and Jill Stein saying they do not accept the election results. She congratulated him and conceded to him on election night. I was right there. And the idea that we are going to drag this out now where the president-elect has been incredibly magnanimous to the Clintons and to the Obamas is incredible.

If Priebus was delivering a message with a poison pen, Conway is delivering hers with a cinder block through the front window, and we're at the point where Trump's people are delivering naked threats against Clinton: drop the recount or else.

All evidence so far indicates Trump holds grudges for years, and that he expects to settle up every one of those grudges as President.  Nixon's infamous "enemies list" has nothing on Trump's coming incarnation.