On October 7, 2026, while promoting a new federal savings program for children, President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he ‘can do whatever I want’ — a comment that came just seconds after claiming he could have done ‘very bad things’ to Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama but chose restraint. The roughly 51-second exchange, shared by journalist Aaron Rupar on X, drew hundreds of thousands of views within hours and landed across outlets including The Hill and The Independent.
The Quote, Word for Word
The context matters here. A reporter pressed Trump on his repeated claim — echoed by House Speaker Mike Johnson — that Democrats would pursue impeachment if they retake Congress in the November 2026 midterms. When asked what grounds Democrats would use, Trump deflected and pivoted to what he says he held back from doing himself: “I could’ve done very bad things to Hillary Clinton. I could’ve done very, very bad things to Joe Biden. I could’ve done very bad things to Barack Hussein Obama. I… thought it was inappropriate to do so because you have to treat the office of the presidency with respect. Then I found out that they impeached me twice and I certainly, to this moment, I can do whatever I want, if I want.” He did not specify what those ‘very bad things’ would have entailed.
Trump: “I could’ve done very bad things to Hillary Clinton. I could’ve done very very bad things to Joe Biden. I could’ve done very bad things to Barack Hussein Obama … I can do whatever I want, if I want.” https://t.co/xN6hiFNTaX
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 7, 2026
Trump was impeached twice during his first term — first over the Ukraine call, then over the events of January 6, 2021 — and was acquitted by the Senate both times. The remarks reframe both impeachments not as constitutional accountability but as personal injuries that, in his telling, license future retaliation. That framing is doing a lot of work in a single sentence, and it’s worth slowing down on.
Presidential Power Has an Actual Ceiling
A sitting U.S. president operates inside a web of constitutional, statutory, and international constraints — not above them. The idea that a president can unilaterally ‘do whatever he wants’ to a private citizen or a former official collides directly with the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments (due process), federal criminal statutes, and the entire architecture of the separation of powers that the framers built precisely to prevent this kind of executive concentration. how past presidents have tested those limits
What makes the comment politically potent — and editorially significant — isn’t that Trump would actually be able to act unilaterally on any of this. It’s that framing unchecked personal power as a form of mercy (‘I chose not to’) is a rhetorical move that normalizes the idea that restraint is optional. That is a different thing than having the legal authority to act.
The Event It Almost Interrupted
The exchange happened at an Oval Office event centered on Trump Accounts — tax-advantaged investment accounts (also called 530A accounts) designed to automatically enroll roughly 70 million American children under 18 who have Social Security numbers. The Treasury Department handled auto-enrollment; parents or guardians still need to claim the accounts to manage them. The program includes government seed contributions in some cases, annual family contribution limits, and a high-profile philanthropic pledge: Michael and Susan Dell committed to funding $250 deposits for millions of enrolled accounts — a multi-billion-dollar commitment that dwarfed anything else announced that day. Within minutes, the ‘very bad things’ clip had eclipsed all of it in reach and engagement, which tells you something about what audiences are tracking right now heading into midterm season.
- Trump’s political rhetoric in 2026
