Among those being mentioned for Trump’s secretary of defense are Christopher Miller, who served temporarily during his administration, Michael Flynn and Mike Pompeo.
Donald Trump is sparking fears among those who understand the inner workings of the Pentagon that he would convert the nonpartisan U.S. military into the muscular arm of his political agenda as he makes comments about dictatorship and devalues the checks and balances that underpin the nation’s two-century-old democracy.
A circle of appointees independent of Trump’s political operation steered him away from ideas that would have pushed the limits of presidential power in his last term, according to books they’ve written and testimony given to Congress. Most were gone by the end. In a new term, many former officials worry that Trump would instead surround himself with loyalists unwilling to say no.
Trump has raised fresh questions about his intentions if he regains power by putting forward a legal theory that a president would be free to do nearly anything with impunity — including assassinate political rivals — so long as Congress can’t muster the votes to impeach him and throw him out of office.
What do you mean fears are growing??
He’s openly and repeatedly said he’s going to be a dictator. Literally his plan right from day one.
If anything, fears are growing that America will just lay down and accept this.
But muh inflation! Muh gas prices! Something something genocide in Gaza. Also, BidenSoOld! /s
I feel like genocide is an ok thing to care about. My vote doesn’t matter since I’m not in a swing state. I’m going to vote for Biden anyway but if someone in a firmly red or blue state wants to cast a protest vote against genocide, that’s not a vote for Trump.
It is, but whatever makes them feel better
Genocide is definitely an ok thing to care about but it is not a reason to vote for Trump. There isn’t really an anti-genocide candidate right now. Or like, in the last 20+ years of presidential elections.
When you’re going to have a near 100% republican turnout for Trump any liberal who abstains from voting is essentially voting for Trump.
In the end, we American Exceptionalism’d our way into collapse, disrepute, poverty, strife and very possibly the end of everything we thought made America Exceptional.
Fitting, ironic, horrifying.
The right is busy being very dumb, angry and violent.
The elder liberals are barely now realizing how badly they fucked up, but are unable to conceive of anything that could possibly effectively change this course, because of reasons that boil down to things that make them slightly uncomfortable or may mean they will have to live slightly less wealthy lives.
The younger liberals and leftists are so poor and broke so often that when they do have some money, they drown their depression and neuroses in escapist media and fandom contests, and when they get tired of that or cant afford it, they bicker amongst themselves in ways that are ultimately also barely ever productive at making things better.
Though some meaningful progress has occured on some fronts, it is nearly certainly nowhere near enough to dam the coming tidal wave of a massive economic downturn for the masses, driven by corporate greed, decaying infrastructure, and the inescapable ramifications of climate change.
The few corporate chosen ones will, like Patrick Bateman, become masters of rhetoric amd feigning genuine care while actively becoming wealthy off of making everyone else more poor, and due to their inherently hyper competitive lifestyles they will become better amd better at this as the weaker, less adept ones fall off.
Shits gonna get real wild when living conditions collapse even further and oppression kicks into a higher gear.
Fascist things Trump used the military for during his first term:
- Assassination of an Iranian General
- Clearing out protestors for a photo op while holding the Bible upside down (Christians missing the antichrist parallels)
- Sending thugs in vans to abduct protestors
- Science denial at the height of the pandemic and during hurricanes
- Refusal to condemn stochastic terrorists (there are good people on both sides folks)
- Firing or attacking anyone who dissents with his ill informed opinions
I’m sure I’m missing many other points as this list van just keep going.
Those thugs in vans were prison riot police, since the regular police just had sactions placed on them and the military had to follow the uniform code of military justice. The prison riot police have exceptions from some of the laws.
Also why DeSantis was looking at forming a State milita, because the national guard has to follow federal laws.
Plan 3 was just hold up all military promotions and fill them with people willing to ignore the law - which also failed. Got to stay vigilant, all it takes is one success.
100% any successes for them equal a loss for the rest of us.
Remember that time Federal marshals shot a man to death in broad daylight and nothing came of it? Fun times.
Wasn’t the guy a nutty Trump supporter threatening people? I’m also pretty sure the guy was armed and got way more time than any black dude would have.
If I’m recalling the right instance that is.
This is the one i’m referring to.
(Though don’t trust the details there, the whole story fell apart as soon as scrutiny was applied. The NYT (i think, it’s paywalled) did a follow up where they basically determined federal marshals just rolled up on the dude in the middle of the street and shot him in cold blood.)
Thanks for the follow up.
Okay yeah i remember this one, honestly I’m not surprised this one played out how it did, Reinoehl was a highly aggressive dude, especially towards cops, he’d been suspected of murder, and then you have the Orange asshole in the white house saying dumb shit and as usual, throwing gasoline on the already inflammable situation.
WTF??
Fears??
HE LITERALLY STATED HE WILL DO EXACTLY THAT, MULTIPLE TIMES!
But this is a news article. They need to recycle the things they rile people up the most.
I want to say “Well, the military won’t comply with those commands” and maybe they wouldn’t, but if we even get into that position we’re in deep trouble.
Fears Grow That Donald Trump Is Not Lying This Time
Would it happen to have anything to do with the fact that he said he would?
Will the military go along with it though? Remember, Republicans held up a ton of promotions and Democrats pushed them through. I don’t think the officers are going to forget who stopped them from getting a pay raise.
I dunno… you can count on Americans doing the right thing after exhausting every other option. But the way I hear my buddies talk… I can’t make sense of it. All blue collar, all scraping by, some require benefits for family support… and All the fault of the Democrats… It’s so unhinged… And I tell then each time they whine.
I think that’s true in general, but some of them get burned and learn their lesson. Trump went to the Carrier factory and promised the factories wouldn’t go to Mexico and then a few months later, Carrier laid everybody off and moved down to Mexico. Not all of them lost their Trump mania after that, but a lot did.
I would be more comfortable if the US actually had law that said US military officers weren’t obligated to follow orders they know to be illegal. Germany has that post WW2, but technically in the US you can be punished, maybe even imprisoned, for not following a dictator’s orders.
That’s not true at all. Following an unlawful order is illegal and not a valid excuse.
The officer oath is to support the and defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.
Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (aka disobeying a direct order) spells out that it only applies to lawful orders.
Anything illegal is non binding, and stating you’re following an order is not an excuse. That’s literally one of the rules of the Geneva convention.
All that to say, not at all true. What I really would expect if Trump tried pulling this off with the military is a huge amount of resistance and pushback and no one in command really following the illegal orders.
There might be some schism group of crazies who try and jump the chain of command because they’re MAGA crazies in the military, but it’s definitely a small minority.
The US Military is a volunteer force, the officer corps has been taught and studied the history of these type of bad orders and crazy situations extensively. The NCO corps and rest of the enlisted are not ignorant bumpkins who are ignorant of their jobs and their duty to the constitution.
I don’t think it really “isn’t true at all”. While I agree with you, by and large the US military are very competent and truly patriotic, you yourself mention a “schism group of crazies” who would circumvent things. I don’t think it’s likely they would take over comprehensively, but I worry that the possibility of some critical mass succeeding is there.
I think the US is far more likely to wrangle around what a “lawful order” is than many other countries.
My experience is only anecdotal, but while I served in the USAF, I saw and expected officers and enlisted personnel to uphold integrity first and excellence in all we do. I did not meet anyone who didn’t take their oath seriously or those who would put politics before country. Also the political spectrum I met while enlisted was very broad and I personally doubt the caliber of men and women truly needed to overthrow the government would be on board with the plan due to how seriously we take our oath.
Their oath is to Commander-in-Chief. What are they going to do with placed Pentagon lawyers declaring lawful orders like Gitmo torture.
Pretty sure the Manual for Courts-Martial specifically says only lawful orders need to be followed
That’s cool, and yeah I would expect the military court to take those things into consideration. However, Trump has already shown a propensity to stacking courts, so that’s not necessarily something I would cling my hopes to.
Yeah, because he said he would.
Military swear an oath to protect against “enemies, foreign and domestic”.
Trump is a domestic enemy.
Donald Trump Hates The US Military - Long List Of Links
^copied from that other site for preservation sake. There’s been a good chunk of time since that list was posted and now, so I’m sure there’s plenty of material to add to it, so please comment if you have a link to add.
But yeah, I was active duty when Trump was voted in, and him trying to run the military like a dictator was a concern on day one. Once my contract was up, this was a huge factor in my “FUCK NO!” when considering reenlistment.
His good buddy was talking to a cop about murdering Democrats.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump is sparking fears among those who understand the inner workings of the Pentagon that he would convert the nonpartisan U.S. military into the muscular arm of his political agenda as he makes comments about dictatorship and devalues the checks and balances that underpin the nation’s two-century-old democracy.
Trump has raised fresh questions about his intentions if he regains power by putting forward a legal theory that a president would be free to do nearly anything with impunity — including assassinate political rivals — so long as Congress can’t muster the votes to impeach him and throw him out of office.
Now, bracing for Trump’s potential return, a loose-knit network of public interest groups and lawmakers is quietly devising plans to try to foil any efforts to expand presidential power, which could include pressuring the military to cater to his political needs.
In its final written report, the committee wrote that “some at the [Defense] Department had genuine concerns, counseling caution, that President Trump might give an illegal order to use the military in support of his efforts to overturn the election.”
Unhappy that many NATO countries weren’t ponying up enough for defense, Trump had considered dropping out of the post-World War II alliance, his former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his book, “The Room Where It Happened.”
Sending troops into American streets is often a bad idea, military experts say, pointing to the sort of tragedy that unfolded at Kent State University in 1970 when National Guardsmen shot and killed four students protesting the Vietnam War.
The original article contains 2,923 words, the summary contains 262 words. Saved 91%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I feel like there is this small prevailing logic that is circling about that uses Trump as a hammer against the current system.
AKA Anarchy.
If you can’t fix the system, can’t outvote the system, and companies keep lobbying to break the system in their favor. Why not use trump like a battering ram against that system?
I fear this kind of logic circling about, but it is already a logic that has already won out in many Republican circles
The more time that Biden delays things that he promised, and continues to use American bombs against civilians, the more that logic is going to catch on with Democrats too.
Trump is not a bowling ball in a glass house. He is a Balrog in Moria. He will perch himself in the captial and never leave if he is there again. The doors to your Anarchy will not open, and the gates to Trump’s kingdom are locked with barbed wire.
And Biden is letting Israel commit terrible atrocities. How do I defend this? When my choices are Authoritarianism vs Genocide
You spend months defending Biden from Trump, and the only ammo they give you is that trump could be worse and now your tax dollars are going to kill babies.
No minimum wage increase, no student loan forgiveness, no maternity leave, hell democrats are reneging on positions of progressiveness. And instead of ALL THAT, we are ruining our national image bombing kids in Gaza.
So yes, there is a bit of evil logic that is going about and wondering if you should be the one to stand between a lawful evil vs. chaotic evil fight.
Those are not your choices. There is not a single incumbent or candidate that would protect Gaza’s citizens from this genocide. Look up who supports palestine in this conflict. It is not cabinent members, or congressional seats, but the very workers in the white house and Biden’s campaign speaking out. The affluent and powerful seem unable to see and/or recognize this for what it is. They refuse. Republicans would do no different. Every self-proclaimed Christian with a voter base would happily bomb Bethlehem right now. This is going to require more protesting than Vietnam did. If we want it to stop, we’ll have to force the hand that holds the pen. If you’re interested I suggest looking in your local area for protest groups.
As an LGBT person I’d very much like the candidate that isn’t going to send me to detention camps please
