Already looking ahead to the turmoil his re-election could cause, Donald Trump and his allies are reportedly circling an idea to invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office, deploying the military to act as domestic law enforcement.
According to a Washington Post report on Sunday, the drafting of such plans has largely been “unofficially outsourced” thus far to a coalition of right-wing think tanks working under the title “Project 2025.” It was identified as an immediate priority for the hypothetical resurrected Trump administration, internal communications obtained by the newspaper showed.
In response to questions from the Post, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung provided a statement: “President Trump is focused on crushing his opponents in the primary election and then going on to beat Crooked Joe Biden,” he said. “President Trump has always stood for law and order, and protecting the Constitution.”
One failed coup, on trial for insurrection and planning the next one.
Welcome to this episode of “Dumb Criminals”.Technically if he wins the election it wouldn’t be insurrection, but anyone trying to stop him would be.
He won’t win.
As an outsider looking in I’m not so confident
I’ve heard that one before. Didn’t turn out well.
I’m a Brit. In 2016, my best friend (who’s not a betting man) walked into a betting shop and placed a £50 accumulator on Clinton winning the US election and the UK voting to Remain in the EU.
Dead certs, right?
I always bet for bad news that way I still get something.
I said that the first time around. I’m hoping it remains true though.
Man, I was hoping that since we’re obviously gonna end up with a dystopia, that it would be a cyberpunk one, but here we are, gonna be stuck with a regular boring ass dictatorship.
At least people will understand why we are revolting. Convincing the world of your cause is usually the hard part.
No, but please keep telling me how a three year age difference is more important than US democracy…
I think I’m missing some context.
That poster is complaining about the people who view Biden as too old, while Trump is only three years younger.
Biden IS too old.
And also Trump is too old. And a crazy person. Lol
Thanks
It’s going to be interesting (assuming our system survives the onslaught of conservatives) how the “liberal media” deals with things like age reversal, should they come to pass. What will constitute being “too old” in such a context?
That’s what I hate so much about our “liberal media” system. They keep both sidering stuff like Biden’s age vs. donnie’s overt appeal to fascism.
How to have large swathes of the military join the protestors, step 1.
People IMO VASTLY overestimate the popularity of the Republicans among the troops. It probably breaks about the same way as the general populace, and as far as being willing to follow orders to march against protestors, the troops that would do it are probably more worried about their own fellow soldiers turning on them than they are about being reprimanded for saying no.
That might be the point. Deploy the military in a low stakes situation to see who listens. Kick all the defactors out of the military. Then, when you actually need them, you are left with a military full of loyalists.
Oooh, You see the scary smart level of evil.
I think attempting that would instantly prompt an international crisis for no reason other than the fact that the US would instantly be reduced to a sliver of its usual operating military strength.
Forget the military turning on itself, at that point the EU are sending troops over for an intervention.
Forget the military turning on itself, at that point the EU are sending troops over for an intervention.
Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your judicial and regulatory distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt no not misuse regional names for foods. Resistance is negotiable in parliament, but will take a long time to do so.
The USA is it’s own continent, noone is going to attempt to send troops over. A self coup like that is very plausible, it’s been done many times before in other countries and there’s nothing exceptional about the USA in this regard.
So are these military members who help “overthrow” the current rule going to wear a specific color? Like Brown Shirts, for instance?
It’s not that easy. You could lose the wrong kind of people, let leaders, have rank imbalance. It’s not one big pool of people. I mean what if 70% refuse? We just neuter ourselves?
As far as active duty folks go, I agree with you. But the overwhelming likelihood is that it would be National Guard troops deployed in this manner, not Regular Army. In my limited experience working with Guard units, they vary pretty widely in terms of training and professionalism.
Hmm, maybe that could introduce some variability but I’d point to the DC riots where NG troops were so ashamed of what they were doing that several confessed to reporters that they were lying to their families and saying they weren’t deployed for that.
Ultimately it’ll end up coming down to how willing your typical boots on the ground in the moment soldier would react to being given such a wildly unconstitutional order as to openly engage in hostilities against dissenters, to that end I believe the US shares Germany’s protection of the right to refuse an unlawful order and to arrest the superior issuing and trying to force it.
I also think most military higher ups tend to air at least on the side of not being flagrant about contempting the general lean of the public against a more right wing posture, so I’d place decent odds that Trump would be playing with the possibility of the US military going on strike rather than assisting his attempt at being a big strong boss man and locking up everyone who disagrees.
We could debate what a general strike would do to the US economy, but we can all agree that the USM going on strike would more or less instantly prompt constitutional crisis mode.
Yeah, it would be a dangerous move for Trump, certainly. I’m cautiously optimistic about the military not supporting a fascist coup, but a lot less sanguine about them participating in a general strike. Regardless, it’s frustrating how many people seem to think the military is just the cops with bigger guns. The culture is completely different. If anything, I’d say the average soldier’s mentality hews much closer to “Protect and Serve”, rather than toxic warrior-cop “civilians are the enemy” bullshit that infects seemingly every police department.
The military is there to preserve the system and nothing more. It’ll mow down dissenters regardless of who they are. The military is ultimately the only branch that holds any real power since they’re the ones with greater access to violence anyway, and could just hold a coup and take over the government the same way they do in third world countries.
When you post these kinds of c/i’m14andthisisdeep takes, completely devoid of nuance, it just makes it seem like you don’t have a single clue what you’re talking about. No offense intended, I honestly edited this comment several times, attempting to make it more civil.
When you dismiss sound arguments and obvious facts with an appeal to a sub that doesn’t even exist on Lemmy yet, we know you’re just a hopeless removed who doesn’t want to hear the truth, will only get people killed and should not be listened to or respected.
Yeah except how the military isn’t an independent institution and any attempt to try would immediately be met with having their entire budget cut their leaders arrested and every soldier who even breathed agreement with the notion being given their own cell in the newly built supermax prison made to order just for them, assuming they aren’t all executed for treason and insurrection that is.
And the guy called Cheung is behind that quote? Wake up sweety, you’d go into conc camps, just like asian-looking americans did while the ww2 was going on.
Trump was the exemplary student of “Escalation 101” at Dicks University.
that’s how you turn a cold civil war into a hot civil war
And yet not a single person with the power to do anything right now - is doing anything right now.
Motherfucker is still outright disrespecting our entire system of justice - or whatever is left of it for the rich.
Well if they actually punished people when they did something wrong, then it wouldn’t look very good for decorum now would it?
If we cared for decorum then we would’ve never stopped wearing the white wigs.
Straight facts
This is not true at all. There are many very powerful people working very hard to make sure that he’s not reelected. That you don’t know about it says more about you than it does anyone else. You just aren’t paying attention.
Correct. That’s the plan
Honestly, I think that if Trump is in the General Election as a candidate, it could be civil war regardless of who wins. The hard right loves him, and would revolt if he lost, with cries of election stealing, and the hard left would lose their shit that they had to deal with him for another 4 years if he won. I’m hoping he gets disqualified, though I could see even that ending badly. At this point, I’m thinking a cabin in the woods is the best bet.
You guys only got one isolated revolt last time, and remarkably anyone who had a gun illegally didn’t fire it, and anyone who had them legally didn’t fire until it was the last option. Hopefully it won’t get out of hand if he loses again, and I feel a whole lot better that someone stable is in charge for the lead up to a potential transfer of power this time.
All that said, I don’t have high hopes. Bo Burnham said it best: how is the best case scenario Joe Biden
I’m jumping ship for Europe personally
I hate this fucking timeline so much. So many in the media seem to be working toward normalizing this obvious march into fascism, and pivoting to stupid horse race bullshit (the average voter thinks Biden is “too old” and so on).
If donnie “wins” the election (likely only the EC again) then this country is just so fucked. It’s over at that point.
It’s obvious that 2016 is the branching point of where we deviated from the prime timeline. There it’s just too much foreshadowing about Hillary being the first female president, and everything seem to go wrong when we killed that gorilla. He Quantum immortalited it so he only died in this shitty timeline
Harambe was murdered by a time traveler, there is no other option.
sigh Dicks out
Wait, are we doing dicks out for Harambe again?Last time I did it, I was told I wasn’t allowed at the Zoo anymore.
Nah I think it was when Nixon won the Presidency. You can draw a straight line from that corrupt fuck to so many of our current problems.
If he wins, we lose our democracy, it’s as simple as that. I don’t know that it will be permanent since I think that most of our institutions are strong enough to resist or at least slow-walk the implementation of a truly authoritarian state architecture, but it is going to be very ugly and a lot of Americans are going to suffer.
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Shoot POC and trans people on sight ofc. They are responsible for unemployment, crime rate and gay frogs.
Good thing they sent a strong message to rioters that the consequences for storming the Capitol to overturn an election is… maybe a couple of years in prison maximum. I’m sure that’s enough to dissuade Trump from trying again. He wouldn’t want to hurt his supporters, would he? /s (every sentence)
I like to think I can read pretty good, but I couldn’t figure out how the post summary is related to the article.
Dailybeast does a “doomscroll” load next article thing. That paragraph is from that. Its on the same page, so the bot likely just fucked up. Here’s the article name if y’all want context:
Inside the Mean-Girl Army Going to War for a Celebrity Dietician
No need to worry about world war 3 starting in the middle East if we start it right here in America.
I don’t think he knows how the military works. I served in the USMC, they’re people. We aren’t any different. If you ask the military to start terrorizing people, well those are the friends and family of those troops. They won’t mindlessly abandon all morals.
Can you count the number of those that include military action against US citizens?
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I’m, surprised he didn’t do this during his first term
I’m pretty sure he tried, but institutions held and the military didn’t let him get away with it.
I think Gen. Mark Milley was on-guard against Trump’s antics (especially after he got tricked into appearing in uniform with Trump for that upside-down Bible photo-op) and that through the end of Trump’s term, Milley stood firmly against use of the military against civilians or for political purposes.
But if Trump really were to be elected again, who will be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under his new administration?
Is it me?
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When they win, they will try to rehabilitate the “conservative salute”.
