The revenge president is at it again. But the weird part of this story is that there's no real revenge to be had:
The US general who was photographed as the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan is seeing a promotion blocked by a sole Republican senator, multiple outlets reported.
....The senator reportedly placing a “hold” on [Lt. Gen. Christopher] Donahue’s promotion, Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, did not comment. Citing a Senate aide, Military.com said Donald Trump’s transition team requested the move.
....News of Mullin’s block on promotion for Lt Gen Donahue caused a stir in Washington, particularly given a recent NBC report which said Trump transition staff were making “very serious” moves towards “creating a commission to investigate” the withdrawal.
Such moves, NBC said, included “gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason”.
Trump made a bit of election hay out of the Afghanistan withdrawal—including some typical Trump blather about court martials for treason—but none of the people involved did anything to him. So why is he so hellbent on going after them? Everyone knows they did nothing wrong.
And what's the point of the court martial talk, anyway? As commander-in-chief I suppose Trump can order a court martial, but he can't dictate the result. And there's no panel of 3- and 4-star generals in the country who would ever vote to convict.¹ The whole thing is just the pipe dream of a halfwit.
It's been my assumption for a while that if Trump won he'd continue his stream-of-consciousness bluster as usual but wouldn't ever follow up on his most appalling suggestions. More oil drilling in Yosemite Valley? Sure. Deporting 20 million illegal immigrants? Nah. But maybe a million. Court martialing innocent generals? Sent down the memory hole forever on Election Day.
And it might still work out this way. But I have to admit he's getting scarier and less attached to reality every day. And Congress sure doesn't show any signs of doing anything aside from rolling over and begging for Trump to give them a belly rub.
¹Before you ask, the panel votes are secret so nobody has to worry about personal retribution for voting the wrong way.
"Before you ask, the panel votes are secret so nobody has to worry about personal retribution for voting the wrong way."
As long as they're not unanimous.
Exactly. Assuming the panel decides to throw a vote towards conviction just to placate Trump and maintain the anonymity, that's just one more step towards legitimizing it.
Kevin's comments, while certainly germane, do include something that bothers me: he implies that carrying out pre-election lies is far, far worse than the lies were in the first place. But I believe that the acceptance of such lies in our political culture is equally bad. Lying is bad, no matter how much we normalize and trivialize it. Really, really bad.
I've always maintained that any election where votes are secret should have one vote for each side/candidate automatically registered to prevent knowing who voted for what when all votes were for one side/candidate. Additionally, the first "real" vote in any category is discarded/hidden by the automatic vote. That's in cases where there are, for example, 5 individuals who vote the same way, the tally would not be 1 to 6 (making it clear it was unanimous) but 1 to 5.
“¹Before you ask, the panel votes are secret so nobody has to worry about personal retribution for voting the wrong way.”
Nothing stops him from punishing all of them if just one of them votes against Trump’s wishes. Trump loves collective punishment and guilt by association. Remember he’s also the asshole who still calls for the Central Park five to be executed despite their innocence.
Remember that he tried to deny wildfire aid to California because he lost the state, even though the residents of the area on fire had voted for Trump.
Americans voted for the Felon because they remembered how great they had it in his first term. It’s all part of the plan:
1. Courts-martial for generals!!!
2. ???
3. Eggs $1.00/dozen!!! Gasoline $2.00/gallon!!!
Don't forget widespread oil field bankruptcies as a result of $2,00/gallon gasoline.
There’s also nothing stopping Trump from requiring a closed trial with Trump dictating the verdict followed by a public vote. Kevin can say that this would violate some kind of legal requirement in the UCMJ (which it would). But what we’re quickly learning is that laws are just words on paper. They’re not self enforcing. They depend upon a societal consensus and require people who are willing to enforce them.
Despite Kevin's professed puzzlement, I think Trump's reason for wanting to put a bit of stick about in the top echelons of the military is obvious. He's made no secret of his wish to have generals who are personally loyal to him.
This does seem rather obvious.
These initial steps will make future obedience more likely.
And future military obedience will allow the NYTs (and Kevins?) of the world to shrug off whatever the next thing is.
Hard to quash public discontent when the feces hits the fan without a compliant military.
Back to looking at property outside of the US.
"And Congress sure doesn't show any signs of doing anything aside from rolling over and begging for Trump to give them a belly rub."
And is there any obvious reason why they would behave in that way ?
They've been eaten by a grue.
They will be the biggest losers if Trump gets complete control, because they will lose any influence that they have (and the associated money earning opportunities).
"Treason"? Has Trump ever actually read the definition of treason in the Constitution? ... Yeah, sorry, never mind.
The precipitous and poorly-planned withdrawal from Afghanistan WAS HIS FUCKING IDEA IN THE FIRST PLACE!!! He released 5000 Taliban prisoners, many extremely dangerous terrorists, in order to get them to agree to it. And then did everything he could to undermine an orderly drawdown and withdrawal once Biden won in 2020.
JFC I thought W (with Rice and Cheney) had pulled off the gaslight of the century when he convinced the country that he had never been warned about Al Qaeda preparing to strike in the US but apparently I lacked adequate imagination.
It's been a constant ramping up. The success of the 911 gas lighting paved the path for bigger and more outrageous lies, like that the pretty successful Afghanistan withdrawal was some kind of debacle, caused by "treasonous" generals who, what? Supported the Taliban??
When one outrage works, try a bigger one the next time. Every toddler knows that.
I've always felt ill when hearing old-school Republicans referring to Bush as one of the "good" Republicans. He was no more than a stepping-stone to Trump, and in fact if our political culture had already been corrupted to the extent it is today, Bush would have been indistinguishable from Trump.
Yeah, "Party Above Country" was definitely a thing starting with W. We largely have Karl Rove to thank for that. He, along with Lee Atwater, poisoned the well of American politics like no others.
Let's not let Newt off the hook, here. He's the one that really started it.
".. and in fact if our political culture had already been corrupted to the extent it is today, Bush would have been indistinguishable from Trump."
That is bulshit, and very useful for Trump.
Bush has his issues, but he still had repsect to the truth and the constitution. He certainly wouldn't lie about elections results, for example.
Trump is in his class of its own: he is anti-honesty (rather than just dishonest) and anti-constitutional order (as well as being POS all aroud).
"Bush has his issues, but he still had repsect to the truth and the constitution. He certainly wouldn't lie about elections results, for example."
Is this supposed to be a fucking joke? The guy who had no problem lying about honored service members when he was campaigning against them, and even gave us the word "swiftboating" as an example of the extent he'd go to lie about a medal recipient?
The guy who only walked into the White House in the first place because the Supreme Court put him there?
The guy who started a war under false pretense and then gave torture a a bullshit name to pretend is not torture, and who never gave a damn about due process?
That's the guy you think had respect for truth and the Constitution?
Of the many stupid things you've said around here this is probably the one most detached from reality.
You need to be an idiot to think that any of these things gets even close to lying about elections results.
"The guy who started a war under false pretense"
I think this ranks right up there.
Very far from it, because (obviously) it doesn't put the constitutional order in the US in any danger.
Very interesting that you think that they are on the same level.
What the moves against generals and DOJ lawyers do for the Felon is smoke out the principled ones, who will quit before following illegal orders. The only things he wants in subordinates are absolute servility and undying adulation.
It was his plan so of course it couldn't fail. It's obvious it was the generals fault for not implementing it correctly.
He wanted to know why he didn't have the kind of generals that Hitler had.
He might just get them.
Hopefully Trumps generals are more successful in their extracurricular activities.
Convenient, but it would set a very, very bad precedent.
Yes it would. But Trump would have and already has set some really bad precedents himself.
He wanted to know why he didn't have the kind of generals that Hitler had.
You mean the kind that get together in prison once the regime collapses and make sure they have their stories straight to blame all of their own immorality and incompetence on the now dead Führer?
OT but I think Trumps pick for treasury secretary has some explaining to do to. "Before that, he was the chief investment officer at Soros Fund Management, a hedge fund started by Democratic megadonor George Soros." He worked for George the boogeyman Soros? How'd that get past his crackpot transition team?
Ramaswamy got a,scholarship from a Soros foundation. When he was running for President I suggested that if he got more than some cursory support Trump would call him RamaSoros and kill any chance he had with Republicans.
When was he ever attached to reality -- when he was starring on a reality TV show? That's not where the core problem lies; it's the people under him who are willing to carry out his commands. Senators and others in government who are willing to act on Trump's command even when he's not in office, are the real threat.
But when he's inaugurated, their unquestioning fealty to Trump is the greatest threat. Trump's first term was a disaster because many people under him had a greater loyalty to the country and the Constitution. This time around, those folks are being deliberately filtered out.
IDK why people keep saying he won't do X. Bruh, it's not he, it's they. All the folks under him aren't just willing, they're wanting.
+1
+2
if he really wants to make the military his obedient plaything, willing to follow any order without any qualms about whether they're lawful or not--deploying to blue cities and firing on demonstrators, kicking down doors and disappearing political enemies, etc, then he needs to make a terrifying demonstration of the new order
a good way to do that is to take come component, patriotic, and above all clearly innocent officer and crush him.
make up a bunch of stupid lies about him and repeat them over and over until the cult believes it all. Arrest him and charge him. Make his name a curse among your followers. put him on trial for treason, on flimsy charges and made-up evidence, in open defiance of black letter law, and get a conviction anyway. do a straight up stalinist show trial, right down to dressing the victim in ill-fitting clothes and no belt so he has to struggle to keep his pants on while hearing your farcical court announce it's sham verdict and this very real sentence.
do that, just one time, and the rest will understand that there's no safety other than complete submission.
don't tell me they can't do it. these people made Anthony fauci a villain and ashli babbit a hero. they're perfectly capable of believing that up is down, and doing a murder in service of that belief.
For Trump, everything is personal. By moving quickly on this, he undermines yet another of our institutions, in this case, the military. I have a hard time seeing the upper echelons of the branches of the military kowtowing to Trump and swearing a loyalty oath to him, but if it happens, we're all f&*cked.
Right.
He'll just fire generals until he gets ones that do. For every Mark Milley, there's a Michael Flynn waiting to step up and lick the Orange Führer's boots.
Kevin's shrugging off a second Trump term as a big meh in terms of him doing the awful shit he has been promising was not his best prognostication.