A small group of high-profile conservatives who vociferously opposed Donald Trump's candidacy for president and never fell in line are facing anxious times now that the self-declared vengeful Trump has taken the reins of the most powerful government in the world, The Atlantic reports.
Conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck, who says Trump is "dangerously unhinged" and has appointed some "disturbing people" to his inner circle, said he lives in fear of death threats he's received from the president's supporters.
As a result, he now travels with two bodyguards.
"It is not fun," Beck said. "I don't cherish it, but I value the truth more than I'm afraid of retribution."
"The question is not whether he's vengeful," conservative columnist Ben Shapiro told The Atlantic. "The question is how willing he is to use the levers of government to exact that revenge."
Shapiro, a California-based commentator, was one of Trump's staunchest conservative critics and quit his job at Breitbart after slamming the company's then-CEO Steve Bannon for being a "bully" who had turned the site into "Trump's personal Pravda."
Now that Trump and Bannon are both in the White House, Shapiro says he's taking the threat of retaliation seriously by buying a shotgun and installing an expensive security system in his home.
Insisting that he did not want to sound paranoid, Shapiro said "They can fight very ugly and very nasty. And they do have power now, where if they feel like destroying you, they can."
Although there is no evidence that Trump actually has an enemies list of those he wants to destroy, The Washington Post has reported that Trump's team blacklisted more than 100 Republican national security experts from jobs with the administration, because they signed at least one of the public letters during the campaign opposing his candidacy.
In another indicator of the president retaliating against foes, longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone told InfoWars that "Donald Trump was interviewing Mitt Romney for secretary of state in order to torture him. To toy with him. ... Trump is not a guy who forgets" things like the insults Romney hurled at him, and Trump unceremoniously dumped him once he was seen cozying up to him.
Florida-based GOP strategist Rick Wilson said he knows he will miss out on the perks of being part of an administration in power, but told The Atlantic "the comfort of this is that I don't have to vary in what I believe. I don't have to lie, and get up every morning and say, 'Why yes, the emperor is resplendently robed!' when the guy is buck naked."