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While I am sure that the woke left punishes defectors who cooperate with Trump, it is team MAGA which has perfected using administrative decisions to go after the people who were in the past on the wrong side. I vaguely recall law firms (who by design are mercenary) who had represented people who were litigating against Trump finding themselves without security clearance at the start of the year (or at least having to do an extraordinary amount of ass-kissing to keep them).
Political retaliation is bad no matter who does it. But the way I recall it, when Musk bought Twitter, the reaction of the Biden admin was not to try their very best to burn Tesla and SpaceX to the ground. By contrast, if there was a billionaire who was as firmly committed to opposing Trump as Musk was opposed to the Democrats, I would totally expect Trump to do his best to destroy any companies where that billionaire holds significant stock.
This just seems crazy. Obama retaliated against law firms. Law firms were attacked for filing 2020 election cases. Musk was attacked (eg FCC cancelled grants re Starlink even though Starlink by far was better than other options not cancelled or the DOJ tried to claim worker discrimination for not hiring foreigners even though they were obliged not to do so) by Biden shortly after buying Twitter.
So I think your facts are just wrong.
Technically the FCC rejection of Starlink's rural broadband subsidy application was after Musk made the offer to buy Twitter, but before the transaction took place.
And the Biden grudge against Musk was at least a year older still. Biden holding his "Electric Vehicle Summit" but then not inviting the manufacturer of a supermajority of US EVs because they weren't unionized was ... well, the phrase "crossing the Rubicon" does get overused, but that NY Post article helpfully includes the photos of Biden literally test-driving an electric Rubicon, so who am I to argue with dramatic irony?
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I definitely agree in the case of political retaliation without legitimate provocation. With respect to political retaliation which does have legitimate provocation, I would say it's bad in the same sense that war is bad. Yes, it's expensive and destructive but sometimes it's the best choice.
There's been a problem in the last few years, with abusive lawfare-style tactics on the part of certain prosecuting authorities. How does one handle such attacks? By gently entreating the attackers to stop behaving unfairly?
The question I have about this is whether this strategy was used during the first Trump administration.
Has Trump abused the power of the federal government to "do his best to destroy" CNN?
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For that very specific example, the Biden FCC did in fact cut a major SpaceX (StarLink) contract/grant program on clearly spurious grounds (see FCC v. Starlink here for further details), the Biden EEOC brought questionable claims of anti-immigrant discrimination against SpaceX directly. And those are just the ones with Biden admin people directly signing the paper.
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