So what we're seeing here in Game Theory: pay the other side back until the cry 'uncle' and then things can go back to normal again.

You can't see the difference between a President deciding that a specific individual should be prosecuted versus presidents deciding that certain broad positions were what they wanted to prioritize. Obama and Biden, vs. Trump, decided they wanted different types of civil rights violations to be the top priorities for criminal prosecution. Democrats cared about the abortion clinic side of the FACE act, Republicans the religious institution side. This is something that has always happened with nearly all federal programs that have multiple prongs and aspects - if the Clean Air Act (for example) has EPA doing both permitting and environmental enforcement, different Administrations will think one of those functions is more important to stress than the other. But no President has ever gone so far as to say that the President should be able to point a finger at a specific person or persons and call them out for prosecution.

But it doesn't matter whether you believe that's new or business as usual. Regardless of whether you think that the current level of DOJ weaponization is new to Trump or is the same thing as what Obama, Trump1, and Biden did, there's no "going back to normal again." This is the new baseline. So Trump will very much care about whether a Republican is elected President after he leaves office, because he has to know that he's likely to be treated by the next Democratic President's DOJ the way he has his DOJ treat everyone today.

So, now - he doesn't want to precipitate a spike in gas prices.