I’m not generally a fan of historic analogies when it comes to comparing political situations separated by long periods of time and/or geography…but I’m going to make an exception in this case. You make a good point that Trump didn’t occur in a vacuum, and is a symptom of something that’s been going on for a while in this country.
You’d be a fool to try and say “the Kennedy Brothers or MLK are the Gracchi Brothers, and Nixon is Sula, and Trump is Caesar” or anything nearly that specific. History doesn’t repeat itself. I hope you’ll forgive me for pointing out the reasons why Trump is NOT a Caesar. But history CAN rhyme, and I think looking at the overall situations and comparing them is fair.
I share this concern about a future "Trump, but. . . " E.g. Trump, but more self-disciplined; Trump, but more on-message; Trump, but more knowledgeable about politics; etc. But I also wonder about which elements of Trump you can strip away and still be as effective as he has been. His supporters see his impetuousness, his over-the-top showmanship, his lack of loyalty to anyone but himself as a selling point.
And he is genuinely all these things. There’s no artifice or calculation in it – he is who he is and his supporters intuitively understand and love him for that. That’s why, for all that they’re falling all over themselves to pick up his mantle, I have a hard time seeing a Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley following in his footsteps. It’s too clear that they’re deliberately aping his approach to further their own political ambitions. They may well get a substantial number of Trumpists to go along with them, but they’ll never inspire the enthusiasm that got Trump the second largest number of votes for President in U.S. history.
I think it’s likely that the “next Trump,” like Trump himself, will come from outside politics entirely and likely from the entertainment industry. Tucker Carlson? Maybe. Probably someone we’re not even thinking about right now.
There’s also this:
@Rick_Kitchen slightly overstates the situation: Christopher Miller is currently Acting Defense Secretary. Anthony Tata (who called Obama a terrorist) is currently Acting Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. I have no idea how much power Tata, or Acting Chief of Staff Kash Patel, the former Nunes staffer and Trump loyalist, have in the Pentagon, or whether they could influence any top generals to instigate a coup. But this kind of insinuation of Trump loyalists into positions of power throughout the government has been one of the main things scaring me since November 2016.
And then there’s this:
And the other things mentioned above: the refusal of the GSA and other agencies to cooperate in the transition; the near complete silence from top Republicans.
I’ve been having a serious anxiety attack since I read Rick Kitchen’s post yesterday. Trump’s not smart enough to mastermind a real coup, but there are definitely people around him who are and might try. How would they do it, how could it be stopped, and by whom?
I know it all sounds a little tin-foil-hattish, but there has never been an administration like this one: they’ve never followed any previous norms, and we can’t assume they’ll start now. They’ve already broken many of the implicit rules of transitions.
I’m scared.
I read something this morning that suggests that the endgame behind the Defense Department personnel changes is the declassification of some RussiaGate intelligence that Trump thinks will clear him. Of course, the grownups think it was classified for a reason and that it might compromise national security. So they need the loyalists that will put Trump over national security.
The transition period was destined to be fraught with danger.
The worst situation would’ve been a Trump win. The Republicans would’ve finished what they started, got all non-partisans out of the civil service, suppressed to vote of anyone that they didn’t want vote. That was the plot for the coup that we foiled at the ballot box.
Frankly, the second worst situation would’ve been if Trump suddenly stopped being Trump, accepted his loss and started working in a concerted effort with Republicans to sign EO’s that strengthened religious freedom laws and weakened civil liberties.
But I think Trumps going to start being…what that’s word Republicans use…transactional again. Especially towards the issues he couldn’t give a shit about, like the religious freedom stuff.
You want me to sign an EO restricting trans rights, Mike? Rudy’s giving a press conference at the Waldorf Astoria…no, the Walmart in Astoria today, I want see you by his side telling everyone we won by a landslide.
Yeah, Trump still might do some damage, but only in the arenas that Trump cares about, immigration mostly. But he’s also going to push for the stuff he cares about, bringing down the people that were mean to him and he’s going to try to make deals. He’ll dismantle the Civil Rights act, but only if they arrest Obama.
And I’m completely serious when I say that Trump fully expects his cronies to secure an election win for him and he’s not going to forget it when they don’t. I think the Dems might get the Senate
What am I missing wrt this piece ? Isn’t Trump’s power to classify/declassify virtually unlimited ?
Are you implying that he could order material declassified and that underlings might not do it … thus giving rise to the need to replace them (which sounds like direct insubordination and a ticket to a Court Martial for those in the Chain who are military) ?
I must be missing something.
I’m sure there are many. The main one being that Caeser was a competent man and Trump isn’t.
I snipped this part because of something I’ve been thinking, that Trump fully believes that having a conservative Supreme Court with three of his own appointees means that they will swoop in and rescue him from removal, regardless of the rationale. He’s certainly dumb enough to believe this. And also dumb enough to not realize that an awful lot of process has to occur before they’ll (the SC) have the chance.
There are still enough anti-democracy people in a couple of governments, like GA and PA, though, where state legislators are sniffing at ways to get their own results overturned and kicked upstairs. That scares me to death but at this stage he’ll need three compliant states for this to happen.
Agreed; I’ve mused on this before in other threads, even started one or two. Hope we never have to find out, though.
Two compliant states (PA and GA) and one faithless elector would also be enough.
Yeah, he doesn’t listen well and when he hears his stooges saying shit like “the media doesn’t decide elections, the courts do”, he believes it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he invited Amy Comey Barret to dinner at the White House, she’ll accept thinking it’s a larger event and it’ll just be the two of them, and he’ll start talking about loyalty and why she should vote for him, then he’ll just keep calling her about nothing like she’s his new best friend and sending confident tweets to his supporters about how he’s going to be the next President thanks to her…
Oh, God —- I hope so.
I’ve often thought this over the last four years: how, say, Trump’s Congressional allies would react if he were to say outright, in public, “they’re my buttboys. I say jump, they say how high. I own them.”
I think while it’s virtually unlimited, the grownups have been stalling him and putting up roadblocks for some time now. Remember a month or so ago when he tried to declassify it all via tweet, then it turned out that didn’t happen but he tried to claim it did anyway.
I think he’s ousting the people that have been cock-blocking him on this
I texted a college classmate of mine who is now a retired Army officer about my worries. He wrote:
“There will be no coup. That would depend on support of military which takes its oath to the Constitution seriously and is adverse to any kind of intervention in US domestic politics. Large numbers civilian personnel at DoD, CIA, FBI, Secret Service are prior service and opposed to intervention. Trump can put flunkies in acting positions at the top, but we have a right and duty to disobey unlawful orders. So the personnel changes seem more like vendetta. They will cause confusion, but not a coup. Biden gets that, which is why he is staying cool and moving steadily toward inauguration day.”
That, and some of the other posts here have eased my mind a bit.
In support of that statement:
… Six pre-election and seven post-election lawsuits by the Trump camp have all been tossed out. They are, as President-elect Joe Biden’s deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said, “noise.” Campaign counsel Bob Bauer cautioned that what is going on is “theatrics, not lawsuits.” Judges have described claims that the mail-in ballot system is rife with fraud as “fiction" or entirely based on speculation. None of the allegations about excluded poll watchers have been supported by facts. None of the social media memes about changed ballots or other shenanigans have stood up in court.
Interestingly, Trump’s lawyers refuse to say before a real judge that they have found fraud or other reasons to overturn results. (Keep in mind that, since 2000, only a few hundred votes have ever been changed in a single statewide recount.)
Clearly, the plot to “steal” an election exists only in Trump’s twisted mind. There is no “there” there. But what is going on is something equally sinister: Trump is receiving support from a range of Republican figures, including Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who says congratulations to Biden are premature; a flock of members of Congress from Georgia, who baselessly attack their state’s Republican secretary of state and inexplicably claim their own election victories valid while Biden’s is fraudulent; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who declares the transition will be to a “second Trump administration”; and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who perpetuates the fiction that the outcome is in dispute. The aim is not to steal an election, but to sow doubt about the legitimacy of our democracy — just as the Russians intend.
…The good news is that voters are not falling for it, according to a Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted after the race was called on Saturday reports. Reuters reports: “Nearly 80% of Americans, including more than half of Republicans, recognize President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the Nov. 3 election after most media organizations called the race for the Democrat based on his leads in critical battleground states.” The bad news is that Republicans are hoodwinking 20 percent of voters, many of whom seem to be confused about the results: “13% said the election has not yet been decided, 3% said Trump won and 5% said they do not know.”
The only entity that is discredited — and certainly should not be trusted to control the Senate — is the Republican Party, whose leaders’ conduct is anti-democratic, immoral, dishonest and dangerous.
…
My bold.
It’s theater-- and BAD theater at that.
And one reason the Republicans are playing along is they want to discredit the concept of mail-in voting.
They’re scared. We outvoted their corruption and undid, in a period of a few months, years and years of calculated voter suppression efforts.
A lot of the “voter fraud” claims are general efforts to discredit mail-in voting. But even that’s starting to backfire, because they’ve been scouring voting records and voter databases looking for problems and haven’t found anything more than a few clerical errors and a couple of Trump supporters that tried to vote twice.
Because truth about voter fraud is that your vote is one out of 150 million and only a few insane people will risk a felony to change that to two in 150 million.
When your fraud claims come down to a ballot here and another one over there, you end up proving how CLEAN the process was.
Trump still fucking that chicken, though. Remember yesterday, when the USPIS got that asshat to recant his allegations in about 10 seconds flat. Now he’s saying he was bullied into recanting and he stealthily taped the investigator or something.
And Trump tweeted that shit and it wasn’t even a retweet. I’m betting on the UPSIS for the win
I’m sure the UPSIS is pissed that the POTUS thinks nothing of publicly alleging widespread corruption within the postal service. I hope they’re smart enough to slow walk this shit and make these people think these false allegation are no big deal, because I want them to slow walk this until January 20th. Make these people think they don’t NEED a pardon.
All it takes is one sufficiently motivated wingnut, such as Comet Ping Pong gunman Edgar Welch.
I don’t think anyone can put on over on the US Army using troops domestically. The US Army kills people. That isn’t what you want to do in a riot or looting situation.