If trump plans to continue as president indefinitely, he will need an army. He is now building one out of ICE, and aggressively recruiting from the population most likely to support him-- uneducated, broke, gun-loving men who believe they’ve been marginalized. TV commercials recruiting ICE agents are running, promising a $50,000 signing bonus, $60,000 student loan repayment.
He’s been largely using executive orders to do things; they allow a president to modify or change how a law is being interpreted or implemented, but don’t allow him to create new things out of whole cloth (which would take an act of Congress).
ICE and ICE agents already exist. This seems to be about changes to their mission, and changes to their hiring program.
I’m not too worried about them hiring competent criminal investigators, if they really are analytical and really do seek the truth. Of course, I assume that’s completely false advertising, and anyone like that who is deluded enough to apply will either change their spots or resign.
@ThelmaLou You are correct, can’t become a dictator without an army. This explains a lot around Hegseth, and the purging of high command. BUT, there is a long road to actually get the backing of military high command, who have to hate both Hegseth and Trump. Vast majority of high command are academy graduates, ROTC graduates, or seriously pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
Then you have drunken frat boy, never paid dues, doesn’t have a clue about operational security (opsec) put in charge by Trump. At minimum, the vast majority of the officer corp consider him a REMF (rear echelon mother fucker) that is a clear and present danger to their troops.
In no way ICE can stand up to the US military. Could get nasty.
That said, I have zero direct military experience, so would like to hear the view from anyone that does.
I myself also have no military experience. With that said, those that do seem to take the chain of command very seriously. It sounds like a tight spot to be in right now.
The problem is police would love to support and embrace fascism in the US. So in a way Trump already has a built in army of endless police officers all over city and county governments.
Granted they aren’t organized, but sadly it wouldn’t be too hard for some kind of infrastructure to be built so they could act as troops.
Of course if that happens, all hell will break loose. If a bunch of violent cops with 0 respect for the public start joining a fascist movement and terrorizing people, the public aren’t going to take that without fighting back. Add in the fact that jury nullification is increasingly becoming a tool that people use to resist fascism, and it could get bad.
The military by and large seems too professional and diverse to embrace fascism though. But the police would happily join.
The fighting back isn’t because of the ruling movement terrorizing people, but because of severe economic distress. Cut the per capita income by half, and we’ll see fighting back. Lock up green card holders? No.
And the U.S. has a heck of lot of prisons to lock up said fighters backers.
As I see it, this ICE recruitment campaign is intending to create a body of mercenary soldiers that will be completely different from the regular military. And completely different from regular law enforcement. Furthermore, when trump is through building his army, the commanders of the new ICE won’t look anything like regular military commanders.
He is creating an army to facilitate installing himself as dictator. This seems blatantly obvious to me.
On the upside, I doubt if he will live long enough to accomplish it.
Dictators like to have security bodies with overlapping responsibilities. I can see some minor clashes if both ICE and the Army are assigned to the same streets, but nothing that will be world historic.
When it comes to a coup – and Trump sure talks like a coup plotter – nuclear weapons creates a special situation, not seen in most other hybrid regimes, because there is only going to be one security body that controls which alleged president has the nuclear football. ICE can’t play there.
By “same kind of people”, I mean people that believe that Trump is the government, and that “illegal orders” is something Gramps yammered about back in the day.
Of course, the dictator’s health is a state secret. I guessed that he has heart disease but not cancer, and only does the lightest exercise. They gave him nine years.
