Vengeance is mine sayeth ex-president Donald Trump. And he is preparing to wreak it on his political opponents.

Beavering away in the back rooms of Trump campaign headquarters are scores of political acolytes drawing up plans for a second Trump Administration.

The first term caught Trump and his supporters unprepared. The 2016 presidential transition is regarded by many as one of the worst in American history with key appointments taking months – sometimes years – to be filled. And when the jobs were assigned the people were either ill-suited, ill-prepared or – in Trump’s opinion – not loyal enough.

According to a range of sources inside and outside the Trump campaign, that will not happen if Donald Trump is returned to the White House in 2024. The right people have been identified; are being briefed and will hit the ground running with policies and legislation that will make Trump’s first term look like a Victorian tea party.

For a start, the ex-president is out for revenge. He is a man who bears a grudge and acts on it. His key targets are said to be President Biden, his family, former Attorney General William Barr, the FBI, the Department of Justice, the courts, the civil service and anyone who says he lost the 2020 presidential election.

Donning the victim’s mantle, he has already claimed that he is fighting for every little man and woman who – like him – “has been wronged and betrayed. I am,” he told this year’s Conservative Political Action Convention, “your retribution.”

But there is more, as Trump made clear in near-apocalyptic terms in a recent Veteran’s Day speech in which he pledged “to root out the radical left-wing thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”

As for policies, on the domestic front, the ex-president plans to cut taxes, reduce federal spending, dramatically increase the number of political appointments to federal jobs, re-impose his Muslim ban, deport children born in the US of illegal foreign parents, finish building his southern border wall, defund the FBI, impose the death penalty on drug dealers, ban teachers from teaching multi-culturalism and multi-racism, increase oil and gas production, impose a ten percent tariff on all imports and punish doctors who help transsexual patients.

And if anyone dares to take to the streets to protest, Trump says he will invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to suppress them.

On the foreign policy front his plans are even more frightening. He would send American troops to Mexico to fight the drug cartels. He would withdraw from NATO. He would stop aid to Ukraine and he would provide Israel with unquestioning support. As for Taiwan and China he is reported to be undecided on whether to abandon Taipei or go to war for it. But it is clear that the hall mark of a Trump foreign policy would be isolationism rather than engagement and leadership.

This would leave the foreign and security policies of America’s allies in tatters. Countries such as Japan, South Korea, Australia and Saudi Arabia would likely consider arming themselves with nuclear weapons to replace the American umbrella. Thus nuclear proliferation and the threat of nuclear war would increase.

Russia, China, Iran and other autocratic countries would be free to pursue a policy of might is right which would likely to Russian actions against Georgia, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland as well as Ukraine.

In short, a second Trump presidency would be a disaster for America and the world.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopedia of the War” and the recently published “America Made in Britain". He has a weekly podcast, Transatlantic Riff.