Trump floats sending military after US citizens on election day
‘I think the bigger problem are the people from within, we have some very bad people, sick people, radical left lunatics,’ Republican candidate tells Fox’s Maria Bartiromo
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"And it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military," he said.
"I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within. Not even the people who have come in, who are destroying our country."
It isn't clear under what circumstances Trump would view it justifiable to call in US troops against his own countrymen.
But his comments mark a baseless attack and a particularly hollow one coming from someone whose supporters violently attacked the US Capitol in an attempt to stop him from being thrown out of office three years ago.
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Soldiers are not obligated to follow unlawful orders....the brass will say "no".
Just cause the big guy called Trump a fascist doesnt mean there arent plenty of supporters down the chain of command.
If the soldiers down the chain don't get the order because the big guy ignored the fascist, then their feelings don't matter.
How much support is there for Trump in the military though?
I'm worried about the possibility that this kind of rhetoric could lead to an attempted coup or civil war.
Really depends. In general officers tend to be mixed bag while enlisted soldiers tend to lean Trump.
But it also depends the branch. In my experience most Marines tend to support Trump while the Navy and Airforce is more mixed.
I’m sure you can get some statistics if you look it up. But it’s pretty certain the military leans more conservative than the general population on average.
They lean conservative but not Trump. They voted blue in 2020 because the conservatives didn't really come out to vote for him. They also have very complicated feelings about the Constitution and targeting Americans. So they probably would refrain from getting involved in anything but the most egregious conduct, like the Jan 6th insurrection, until we're so far down the hole they can't maintain unit integrity between left and right. At that point you'd probably see about a 60/40 split.
Our two party system has been in a civil war over control of us slaves for decades. .
Spoken like a person who had no idea what slavery is .
It may not be slavery by the purest interpretation of the meaning of the word, but what we have is still essentially "do shitty work you hate or starve and die in the street".
A definition by which most humans that have ever existed have been slaves.
I mean... yeah?
When your boxes get too big they lose all meaning dude.
Unfortunately people as a whole tend to follow orders regardless of their political party or legality. It's been studied and observed all throughout history
The officers already told Trump no. And when the National Guard was deployed for BLM protests they actually stuck to their ROE and didn't deploy force recklessly like the police. Even when the police tried to get the NG in trouble with the people by dressing like them and then telling the NG they might as well.
If the NG was ordered to show up at the polls they would most likely sit in a position a couple hundred meters away where most people won't see them but they'd be able to respond rapidly. They'd force the governor to be more and more explicit in their orders until they got to an actually illegal one. For example if the NG has been called for law and order they would be under the same restrictions as the police in regards to polling places. (In many states police aren't allowed to hang out there, they have to vote and leave unless someone specifically calls them and faking a call to get them there could count as election interference.)
I know it's hard to understand the military mindset from the outside looking in, but I guarantee you it's not the robotic machine that Hollywood portrays. They are very conscious of their responsibility to the people.
You don't think Trump will find people to do the job for him? Do you remember them black bagging and abducting people off the street in Portland during BLM? While the NG's performance was commendable during that turbulent time, I wouldn't rely on that fact staying true. Also I'm a vet and at least when I was in when we were given orders we weren't told why we were doing them or given any context for them so in the heat of the moment that's all you're going to have to go off of.
This is at a level far above where we dwelled. It's the guys with stars on their shoulders shielding the troops. And you're correct, Trump did find willing lackeys, but he found them in Federal Law Enforcement. Most of them came from the Bureau of Prisons. He can't openly recruit among the military the way he can among federal agents. So I'm pretty sure what will really happen, if he's elected, is he'll stand up that group of agents again, equip them heavily and just call them soldiers.
Which is actually straight out of the dictator's handbook.
Its not as simple as that though, e.g. that electro shock experiment was rather shaky and subsiquent attempts to replicate it have all but falsified its results.
What you have to do is cherry pick the small group of people that are willing to do awful things, you then get them to do those things in presence of the saner people who then feel guilty by association. After that you can use their lack of action to stop this awful thing as blackmail/guilttrip to get them to do some small awful thing of their own, and then repeat that process to get them to do increasingly awful things until everyone is just as bad as what was originally just a very small subset of that group. Importantly even though they're doing awful things they still feel bad about it but they're in too deep, this makes them even more effective than your original psychopaths because they know how they're likely to be punished should your side loose which makes them fanatical in order to avoid punishment.
Its a tried and tested process but not quite as simple as people just following orders.
We have innocent men being lawfully executed by the state in the current year. How many people in total were involved in those processes without a single one standing up for justice? Our current "liberal" presidential administration hasn't uttered a single word in opposition to their murders
That’s because that’s what liberals are and that’s what they do. MLK knew this, and spoke on it, and yet for some reason people like to pretend they didn’t hear it.
Til they don't