It may just be fluff-science. Still though, having watched Trump's presidency, his cycles of rage and retaliation seem to have the look of somebody who gets off when he has his moment of revenge.
Doesn't look like fluff science to me, looks rather serious with objective evidence, needs more work, but this looks solid based on the abstract and the rigor indicated. Generally a guy like this won't take fluff science seriously, much less publish an article based on it, even a political one. Also from my perspective, it "feels right", but that ain't worth shit!
The same patterns of neural coactivation were observed in those addicted, it's only a correlation though and it might be much more true for a certain subset of the population, perhaps the same percentage with addiction issues. One thing is for sure, retaliation is normal in human communities, it is the first line of defense in social justice and where no justice exists. No justice, no peace, means retaliation and there must be psychological systems that anticipate reward for these acts. However like in addiction the anticipation of the reward often exceeds the actual reward and may in fact cause pain and remorse in some people when they harm or kill an enemy.
The anticipation of reward is very important in evolutionary survival and addiction hijacks' this system through repeated conditioning. We see a piece of fruit in a tree across the river and our anticipation of that reward causes up to swim the river, climb the tree and eat the fruit, but the pleasure of attainment does not last long, it can't.
James Kimmel, Jr. is a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, co-director of the Yale Collaborative for Motive Control Studies