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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So say we all.

SO SAY WE ALL

Now go spend 32 hours cutting the corners off every piece of paper on the ship.

About as many corners as were cut in the construction of the Galactica.

She was a tough ol' bird that endured far more than what her more modern descendants could hope to. and without any dry docking/repairs/overhauls. Just field repairs.

To bad they ruined the entire show by having it end with them looking at primitive tribals, salivating at the opportunity to use them as breeding stock.

Wait, which is meant to be serving and protecting the people? Because it isn't the police, and I don't think it's the military.. 🤔

I think in theory the police are meant to. But the 'theory' part of that sentence is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Only it was never the theory either, the police has always been the violent enforcer of the state towards its own population.

The National Guard protects and serves quite a bit after natural disasters. Maybe it's referring to that?

The Coast Guard protects and serves people. Granted, it's usually people who don't know how sailboats work, but it's something at least.

Alex Jones fixated on Posse Comitatus at the tail end of W's second term and Obama's first term, melding it with the idea that FEMA was ready to incarcerate millions of Americans in concentration camps after taking away hundreds of millions of guns, and turn cities into walled off, controlled ingress/egress zones akin to a prequel to Escape From New York.

And now here we are a decade+ after that, with him having been on the ground for and whipping people into an actual insurrection, supporting a fascist who seems to want to actually do things approaching fairly close to his fever dreams of years past, invoking what was once a huge piece of his 'plan for total enslavement' or whatever he called it.

Yeah, Alex Jones was actually right on some of the weirdo extremist things he was claiming being planned, it's just that he was part of those plans to begin with.

One of the problems with having your "truth tellers" rely on commercial sales to get the news out. Jones went from a guy who would mainstream generic fringe views of every conceivable quality to a guy who exclusively dealt in far-right conspiracy theories because that's where the money was at.

Joe Rogan is on a similar arc. The longer he churns out episodes, the more fascist his guests and his "common sense" views become. And then you look at his advertisers...

It's the same way with all the preppers and the people stockpiling an arsenal because "government comin' to get ya". For the most part, these are the people that will gleefully take up arms against their own countrymen if they are given the go-ahead from a fascist government. They won't fight against a fascist government.

There are more civilian owned guns than people in the US, and yeah, a lot of it is from basically people that are building a personal armory.

Hell, there's a whole commonly repeated mantra amongst many guntubers that 'one is none and two is one' that is basically a thought stopping cliche that also shames people into always purchasing a backup gun roughly equivalent to their primary 'just in case'.

When it comes to the people with personal armories... I guarantee that the vast majority (not literally all, but most) of those kinds of people are such assholes, such antisocial totalitarians in their personal lives that they either arent going to have any friends to use all those extra guns, or their 'friends' will just take one and leave after armory man is an asshole long enough.

Functionally, all these goobers have done is made the equivalent of loot boxes or mini dungeons with guns as the prize in an actual SHTF scenario.

Time to turn Trump loose in the retirement home.

He needs locked down in the memory care wing. The dementia is really getting a grip on him.

As [New York Times] wrote, during his one term, the former president argued on multiple occasions to deploy military personnel to shut down protests and take control of the border. During a second term, he is not expected to have advisors pushing back.

The report notes, " ... as he has sought a return to power, he has made clear that he intends to use the military for a range of domestic law enforcement purposes," adding, "During his time out of power, allies of Mr. Trump have worked on policy papers to provide legal justifications for the former president’s intent to use the military to enforce the law domestically."

The "if" of his election fades more everytime he speaks

Just don't get complacent. Vote. Help others vote. Drag them to the voting place if you need to. Promise them cake. Whatever it takes.

We really need to make voting day a federal holiday. Give people paid time off of work so that they can go vote.

And make sure to push back on the obvious MAGA propagandists online, even if they pretend to be leftists.

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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So now that NYT has taken the gloves off for trump, I guess it's even more clear that all that soft pedaling before was just because they wanted Biden out. 🤔

Sure, but could any of those military guys actually get a presidential medal of freedom? Not a purple heart or anything that Trump has suggested is dumb, but a real award for winners like the presidential medal of freedom.

(opinions about these awards are from Donald Trump, on the record. /s from me.)

I doubt it

He's made his intentions to do shit like this clear on many occasions, and has built a cult of yes men around him. So either you're oblivious, lying, or misinformed.

I hate Trump with a fucking passion. But he was president for 4 years and did nothing like that. Why didn't he do it then? Why would he wait to be reelected instead of doing it when he actually had power?

He couldn't do a lot of what he wanted because he was unprepared. He didn't expect to win. This time, a bunch of MAGAs sat down and planned out how he can do this and a lot more. It's in the Project 2025 document.

Good point, I wish I thought of that when someone presented the question to me

I don't.

In fact, I live in Australia, and months before the insurrection, I saw 5 mins of one of his rallies at the time and it was obvious he was trying to manipulate the election. They rally likely went on for an hour or more

He's now very openly manipulating people into thinking the justice department needs to be shut down or replaced. He's dropped hints plenty of times he wants an unlimited term.

There is so much evidence here. I'm not even American and I worked it out...

And then you find out the response from Kamala ends up being "Harris has 'made clear' she will turn the U.S. military loose on Trump if elected (and causes a second insurrection): NYT"

Ah, you must be one of those people who believes that just saying the thing in a certain light means it's wrong. One of those people who believes that whole "The uprising will be bloodless.......IF THE LEFT ALLOW IT TO BE". One of those absolutely moronic dipshits who thinks that because a Democrat is in power, it would be improper for them to use military assets to stop it.

Well, news for you and your kin: if you want a "civil war", guess which army you'll be fighting...idiots.

I think he is referencing the right-wing talking point of the week: Kamala "stole Trump's idea" (big air quotes) for not taxing tips. I'd be mad too if the otherside also supported my guys only popular agreeable stance 😤

Their boy Reagan enacted the tax to begin with...

The whole no tax on tips is a bit of a head fake. You hear that and you think: "aw, that's nice. Wait staff will get more money". You're not thinking about the millions wall street gamblers get in bonuses will now be classified as tips. A better policy is for wait staff to be paid a living wage and paying staff is a cost of doing business.

I THINK they are referencing a second insurrection and anticipating no pushback. I'm just reinforcing that won't be the case.