On the morning of January 20 Biden, as the legitimate president, calls upon the US air force to bomb the white House. Who’s going to stop him? Imo that’s just as likely as your scenario.
If I’m a Trump toadie and am given an order that is blatantly criminal and/or unconstitutional in nature, I"m going to think “Hmmmm what exactly are the odds of Trump remaining president on Jan 21? Exceptionaly Low. My choice therefore is 3 weeks of continued employment followed by possible prosecution, or leave now while the leaving is good.” Resignation to “spend more time with my family” follows.
I think it’s eminently logical. It’s illogical to ignore recent events. Every time a republican has been put in the position of deciding between Trump and action, they choose action. All the nonsense spouted by the GOP in support of Trump is just hot air. Most of these Republicans know that nothing will come from it. They’re afraid of riling Trump’s base. I don’t like it and wish they’d show more spine but if Trump were to actually attempt something illegal I’m confident that a vast majority of Republicans will reject it, at least among those who actually have any power to follow through on it.
I am perfectly confident that will happen, and I’m still alarmed. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Here’s my analogy—
I live a beautiful townhouse in Manhattan, finely crafted with quality materials and state of the art security. One night someone decides he is going to try to gain entry to my house. First he tried to trick me into opening the door for him and I told him to go away. Then he went around to every door and tried every knob, just in case I’d left something unlocked. Then he began entering random codes into the keypad on the door system.
(For my analogy to work, the house has to be in Manhattan or some other locale without yards - the potential intruder is standing on a public sidewalk and not legally trespassing)
Then the guy walked around my house, trying to open the first floor windows from outside - luckily they were all locked. Now he’s hitting them with a wrench trying to break them, but luckily I purchased the special unbreakable ones.
In this scenario, I’m 99% confident my house is secure against the efforts of this intrusion - but I’m still alarmed as fuck. I’m alarmed because there’s this crazy guy running around trying to break into my house. I’m not going to just say, oh well, no big deal, he’s not going to get in and ignore him. And if the cops told me to stop worrying, it’s not a big deal, he’s not getting in, just ignore him — I’d be pissed at them. Especially if I had reason to believe that some of them thought, without evidence, that the guy was the rightful owner of my house.
I think it will hold, but I also think it’s going to epic. I think the next two weeks or so will just be more of the same. Trump will continue to build his fantasy world and strengthen his delusions while constantly tweeting. This stasis is the result of both the holidays and the upcoming GA election.
Then hell is going to break loose starting January 6th. I predict the period between Jan 6th and Jan 20th will be the most insane in American history.
The Republicans will vote to allow Biden to take office on the 6th. Trump will view this as the final betrayal. He’s already called for his supporters to come to DC for a “wild” protest on the 6th, which will probably go violent.
He will try to invoke martial law, in the sense that he’ll tell the military to do it, but he won’t be successful. But past that, I expect him to call on his supporters to block Biden’s inauguration by any means necessary.
Once we get past Georgia, I don’t expect the Republican leadership to be as indulgent, there aren’t any elections for awhile. I still think there’s a 30-50% they’ll need to take steps to remove him from office involuntarily.
And I think they’re going to have a problem getting him to leave physically. I know the whole “he’s going to refuse to leave and the Secret Service will need to drag him out” is a liberal fantasy, sort of like hoping for a lottery win - so I’m trying to temper my expectations.
But I’ve also dealt with people with oppositional defiance disorder, and I think his may make him physically incapable of walking out the door.
(In my ultimate exit fantasy, the Secret Service escorts him out the front door of the White House on the morning of January 20th, then he turns and runs back inside before they can shut the door, and the Secret Service has to play hide and seek and drag him out again.
Trump? RUN?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Yeah, it’s a fantasy but I keeping thinking of the episode of The Office where Michael Scott gets fired by Charles Miner - which is a great example of oppositional defiance.
Or they let him, and the scheduled fumigation of the White House commences.
I asked for these details 20 or so posts back…I’m starting to think no one really knows HOW it would work (it’s never happened, has it?) I have the same questions, and knowing more would assuage more concerns, I suspect.
I’ll also point out no one is exactly sure who all or how many people are eyeballing this avenue of action seriously…Flynn is confirmed, and Crazy Law Lady seemed to float the idea of the military seizing voting machines so she could tinker them into making her lies true…but from at least the report I read, they were immediately told they were nuts and a shouting match ensued. Despite the sensationalist headlines, I’ve seen no real confirmation Tramp agrees, wants that, or is considering it. It’s his recently-pardoned international criminal, who might be feeling a tad invincible right now.
If anything, the Secret Service will gently take Trump by both arms and walk him to a parking garage, where he will be calmly and firmly put into the back seat of a car. Two agents will be on either side of him. They will talk in calm, soothing voices. Perhaps they will promise him a hamburger meal, or a favorite toy if he gets into the car.
The car will be driven away from the Whitehouse with no fanfare, and nobody actually aware of who is in the car. It will be taken to an undisclosed location, and Trump will be told that he is no longer president. He will then be transported to Mar-a-Lago, where he can stay for a maximum of 21 days per year according to the agreement he signed with Palm Beach authorities.
Twitter will suspend his account after a couple of threatening tweets. After that… Whatever.
As an addendum to my post 1369, is anyone questions why Flynn is back in the WH…? “I pardoned you…now come brainstorm how I can steal this election!” Or was that an agreement made before the pardon?
Seems quid-quo-pro-y, which would at this point seems like a blanket assumption we can safely make. I just haven’t seen anyone discussing the optics of getting pardoned then stumping on ways to make him King.
That’s why it is a crisis. No one knows what will happen, there are no guidelines for this.
We can speculate, and guess based on how we think that people will react, who they will be loyal to, or how they will interpret the situation.
But there is no guide for defending against a coup. By its very nature, we don’t know what will happen.
I am of the opinion that there are enough people in the military chain of command who respect the civilian form of government and the office of the president rather than the one holding it that any attempts at unconstitutionally holding onto power by Trump will be thwarted by the full might of our armed forces.
That is my opinion, my speculation, and I can point to reasons why I think that that is the case. But we truly are in uncharted waters here. It’s not wrong to be vigilante, it’s not wrong to be concerned, but it is wrong to think that all hope is lost and that we are all doomed.
I really hope you are right. I just want you to remember that the US army isn’t really supposed to be fighting inside the US and that the folks that are holding on to power that they lost in November are inside the military power structure. One order (supposedly from the legitimate president) comes via Twitter or CNN the other (contradicting the first) comes through normal channels from the pentagon. You think that is a no brainer for your avarage GI?
Average GIs don’t make those decisions. Base commanders and above make the decisions on what moves and when. These are officers with 20+ years in the biz. What comes down from HQ is real. What comes over the TwitFace or TV is noise.
If this whole Trump fiasco had occurred either in the US pre-tea party, or in any other western nation today I would like to think that after he was voted out that there would be some sort of investigation or analysis or something of that nature to determine what went wrong and how.
Unfortunately now in the US, because of the 50 to 70 million referred to upthread, and the total disregard for truth and accuracy by a very significant cohort, such a thing will not be possible and I fear that the new subjectivity of truth and accuracy will toxify things well into the future.
No quid pro quo! He just asked him what he could provide in return for being pardoned!
I don’t think this was quid pro quo. Flynn was there with crazy Powell who is his lawyer. I get the feeling it was to discuss strategy about what could be done. The article I linked to and quoted in my post #1301 covered what they discussed about the voting machines and appointing Powell as a special prosecutor to look at voter fraud. There was a post by Maggie Haberman on Twitter where she said Trump brought up the idea of declaring martial law. All of these things together seem to be what set off the shouting with Giuliani, Meadows and Cipollone flipping out and saying no to all of it.
Flynn and Powell still being able to get face to face with Trump is concerning. And Giuliani is the one proposing seizure of the voting machines so he contributes quite a bit of crazy too. The good news is there are still people close to Trump who are able to shoot this stuff down and for now he listens to them rather than the crazy.
Another thing hinted at by that article and I believe by some of Haberman’s tweets is that part of the reason Barr got the boot had to do with refusing to carry out some orders from Trump. The comments about finding no fraud was part of it but the implication was it may have had something to do with arrests or indictments that Barr wasn’t willing to carry out.
If Trump were to try to declare martial law it would surely fail but I don’t 100% believe that would stop him from trying. However, I think having Hunter Biden arrested by federal agents or U.S. Marshalls before 1/20/21 is a more likely thing.
Quid pro quo…
A delight.
I’m not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the military is not supposed to have anything to do with elections. They wouldn’t be allowed to hold “re-run elections” in swing states. I’m not sure if that would carry over to having the Army grab the voting machines, but it might.
Also it’s not allowed for the military to take over the legal system as long as civilian courts are still up and running normally.
Also when the military is dispatched to assist with law enforcement in a certain city, they’re not supposed to be allowed to institute any new or more stringent rules. They’re only supposed to enforce the laws already on the books in that locale.
In addition to LSLGuy’s response, take heart that General Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff, has gone out of his way to say the military won’t get involved and apologized for his conduct in Lafayette Square. It’s possible that Trump will fire Milley and try to find a general who would do his bidding but he wouldn’t be confirmed and he’ll only have a few weeks at most to set any plans.