Trump has 'made clear' he will turn the U.S. military loose on America if re-elected: NYT

just_another_person@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 652 points –
Trump has 'made clear' he will turn the U.S. military loose on America if re-elected: NYT
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National guard maybe but the main military branches of the US cannot be used under posse comitatus, right?

I'm willing to bet he'd just call it an "official act of the president" for legal immunity and the supreme court would back him up with a 6-3 split.

Arresting and silencing people who did not vote for him under the guise of combating domestic terrorism would be so easy. For as much as the right wing bad actors like to claim false flag every time something bad happens that they are to blame for, if Trump were to successfully orchestrate a false flag attack as president, he could have carte blanche to do whatever he pleased to his political enemies so long as the Supreme Court abdicated their responsibility to check his authority.

It really will be a terrifying time to live in America. The absolute best we could hope for with a second Trump presidency is him hunkering down for four years and do nothing after he gets what he really wants - all his criminal cases dismissed. That's the best case scenario. I shudder to think of the worst case scenario, which would be all-out civil war.

Read about Project 2025. They're planning a lot more than that. Left to his own devices, Trump might fuck off for 4 years, but Trump has JD Vance and a whole cohort who have planned all kinds of terrible things if he gets elected. All Trump needs to do is rubber-stamp it, which I have no doubt he would do.

Him maybe, but not generals, guardsmen or anyone who would do that.

With the Supreme Court in his pocket, laws are more like guidelines anyway.

Or he'll probably be able to find a few MAGA-friendly generals (shudders) and start a nice little coup/civil war taking the US well into the banana republic territory and ask any opposition to this move to stop him: "you and what army?".

But things are looking good for him to lose badly (please vote sensible Americans) before drifting away as he keeps losing his mind. Some MAGA idiots will probably try something extremely dumb but hopefully too disorganized and half-hearted to lead to anything serious except getting arrested/shot by law enforcement.

Not legally but when has that stopped him?

When listening to american generals speak they are usually wise men who know a lot about a lot, including the constitution, racism, dictators and such. Maybe it's the optimist in me, but I have a hard time believing they would follow Trump down that path.

The good news is the officer corps isn't trying to follow his illegal orders.

The bad news is the DOJ and federal agents proved willing during the BLM protests.

January 6th.

That was people. They could have bowed to the mob and declared Trump the winner. The military was actually prevented from deploying.

It is every soldiers duty to defy illegal orders.

Unfortunately legality has no correlation with morality. What if the legal orders are to fire on US citizens? We've already seen what happens to legal and peaceful protestors when they're confronted by police.

Well, since it's illegal for the army to be deployed on us soil for police work. Any subsequent order, like firing on US citizens would be illegal.

It is their duty to refuse. "Just following orders" is not an excuse to commit crimes.

Well now they have that supreme court ruling that the president can't commit a crime if it's an "official act" so genuinely who knows. But I could absolutely see someone like Trump using it to squash a protest and then jamming the whole thing up while the courts argue about it for the next 15 years or so.

Shouldn't be. But if the chain of command is all on his side, they won't hesitate to break the law

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