'I Think Things Are Going to Be Bad, Really Bad': The US Military Debates Possible Deployment on US Soil Under Trump
By: President George (Yahoo News)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Michael HirshJanuary 12, 2025 at 3:00 PM·16 min read11.6kLink Copied
The last time an American president deployed the U.S. military domestically under the Insurrection Act — during the deadly Los Angeles riots in 1992 — Douglas Ollivant was there. Ollivant, then a young Army first lieutenant, says things went fairly smoothly because it was somebody else — the cops — doing the head-cracking to restore order, not his 7th Infantry Division. He and his troops didn't have to detain or shoot at anyone.
"There was real sensitivity about keeping federal troops away from the front lines," said Ollivant, who was ordered in by President George H.W. Bush as rioters in central-south LA set fire to buildings, assaulted police and bystanders, pelted cars with rocks and smashed store windows in the aftermath of the videotaped police beating of Rodney King, a Black motorist. "They tried to keep us in support roles, backing up the police."
By the end of six days of rioting, 63 people were dead and 2,383 injured — though reportedly none at the hands of the military.
But some in the U.S. military fear next time could be different. According to nearly a dozen retired officers and current military lawyers, as well as scholars who teach at West Point and Annapolis, an intense if quiet debate is underway inside the U.S. military community about what orders it would be obliged to obey if President-elect Donald Trump decides to follow through on his previous warnings that he might deploy troops against what he deems domestic threats, including political enemies, dissenters and immigrants.
On Nov. 18, two weeks after the election, Trump confirmed he plans to declare a national emergency and use the military for the mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
One fear is that domestic deployment of active-duty troops could lead to bloodshed given that the regular military is mainly trained to shoot at and kill foreign enemies. The only way to prevent that is establishing clear "rules of engagement" for domestic deployments that outline how much force troops can use — especially considering constitutional restraints protecting U.S. citizens and residents — against what kinds of people in what kinds of situations. And establishing those new rules would require a lot more training, in the view of many in the military community.
"Everything I hear is that our training is in the shitter," says retired Army Lt. Gen. Marvin Covault, who commanded the 7th Infantry Division in 1992 in what was called "Joint Task Force LA." "I'm not sure we have the kind of discipline now, and at every leader level, that we had 32 years ago. That concerns me about the people you're going to put on the ground."
In an interview, Covault said he was careful to avoid lethal force in Los Angeles by emphasizing to his soldiers they were now "deployed in the civilian world." He ordered gun chambers to remain empty except in self-defense, banned all automatic weapons and required bayonets to remain on soldiers' belts.
But Covault added that he set those rules at his own discretion. Even then Covault said he faced some recalcitrance, especially from U.S. Marine battalions under his command that sought to keep M16 machine guns on their armored personnel carriers. In one reported case a Marine unit, asked by L.A. police for "cover," misunderstood the police term for "standing by" and fired some 200 rounds at a house occupied by a family. Fortunately, no one was injured.
"If we get fast and loose with rules of engagement or if we get into operations without a stated mission and intent, we're going to be headline news, and it's not going to be good," Covault said in the interview.
Trump has repeatedly said he might use the military to suppress a domestic protest, or to raid a sanctuary city to purge it of undocumented immigrants, or possibly defend the Southern border. Some in the military community say they are especially disturbed by the prospect that troops might be used to serve Trump's political ends. In 1992, Covault said, he had no direct orders from Bush other than to deploy to restore peace. On his own volition, he said, he announced upon landing in LA at a news conference: "This is not martial law. The reason we're here is to create a safe and secure environment so you can go back to normal." Covault said he believes the statement had a calming effect.
But 28 years later, when the police killing of another Black American, George Floyd, sparked sporadically violent protests nationwide, then-President Trump openly considered using firepower on the demonstrators, according to his former defense secretary, Mark Esper. Trump asked, "Can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?" Esper wrote in his 2022 memoir, A Sacred Trust. At another point Trump urged his Joint Chiefs chair, Gen. Mark Milley, to "beat the fuck out" out of the protesters and "crack skulls," and he tweeted that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." Esper wrote that he had "to walk Trump back" from such ideas and the president didn't pursue them.
Some involved in the current debate say they are worried Trump would not be as restrained this time. He is filling his Pentagon and national security team with fierce loyalists. The concern is not just in how much force might be used, but also whether troops would be regularly deployed to advance the new administration's political interests.
This topic is extremely sensitive inside the active-duty military, and a Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment. But several of the retired military officials I interviewed said that they were gingerly talking about it with their friends and colleagues still in active service.
And Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who has long represented military and intelligence officers who run afoul of their chain of command, told me: "A lot of people are reaching out to me proactively to express concern about what they foresee coming, including Defense Department civilians and active-duty military." Among them, Zaid said, are people "who are either planning on leaving the government or will be waiting to see if there is a line that is crossed by the incoming administration."
After the D.C. National Guard was ordered to clear demonstrators from Lafayette Square across from the White House in 2020 using tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades, a group of lawyers founded "The Orders Project" aimed at connecting up lawyers and troops looking for legal advice.
One of the founders, Eugene Fidell of Yale Law School, said that the group disbanded after the first Trump administration but is now being resurrected.
"With the return of President Trump, we're ready to help people in need," Fidell said.
The Lafayette Square incident remains a topic of some debate inside the military community. One DC guardsman, Major Adam DeMarco, an Iraq war veteran, later said in written testimony to Congress that he was "deeply disturbed" by the "excessive use of force." "Having served in a combat zone, and understanding how to assess threat environments, at no time did I feel threatened by the protesters or assess them to be violent," he wrote. "I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what. Anthony Pfaff, a retired colonel who is now a military ethics scholar at the U.S. Army War College, said this confusion reveals a serious training deficiency: Domestic crowd control and policing "is not something for which we have any doctrine or other standard operating procedures. Without those, thresholds for force could be determined by individual commanders, leading to even more confusion."
For active military, most of the current debate is happening behind closed doors. As a result, some retired military as well as scholars and lawyers are trying to bring the issue into public view.
"It's legally and ethically dicey to have open conversations about this," says Graham Parsons, a philosophy professor at West Point who urged military officers and troops to consider resisting "politicized" orders in a New York Times op-ed in September. One concern is whether the military could tarnish itself with an incident like Kent State, when four college students were shot to death by jittery and poorly trained Ohio National Guardsmen in 1970.
"Soldiers are trained predominately to fight, kill and win wars," says Brian VanDeMark, a Naval Academy historian and author of the 2024 book Kent State: An American Tragedy . "Local police and state police are far better trained to deal with the psychology of crowds, which can become inherently unpredictable, impulsive and irrational. If you're not well trained to cope, your reaction might be inadequate and turn to force." He adds that at the Naval Academy as well as West Point, "my impression is this is an issue that is being thought about and worried about a lot but it's not openly discussed."
Some lawyers and experts in military law say a great deal of confusion persists — even among serving officers — over how the military should behave, especially if Trump invokes the Insurrection Act and calls up troops to crush domestic protests or round up millions of undocumented immigrants. In most cases, there is little that officers and enlisted personnel can do but obey such presidential orders, even if they oppose them ethically, or face dismissal or court-martial.
But as Covault puts it bluntly: "You don't always follow dumb orders."
Under long-standing military codes, troops are obliged to disobey only obviously illegal orders — for example, an order to conduct a wholesale slaughter of civilians as happened in the village of My Lai during the Vietnam War. But under the more than 200-year-old Insurrection Act, Trump would have extraordinarily wide latitude to decide what's "legal," lawyers say.
"The basic reality is that the Insurrection Act gives the president dangerously broad discretion to use the military as a domestic police force," says Joseph Nunn, an expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. "It's an extraordinarily broad law that has no meaningful criteria in it for determining when it's appropriate for the president to deploy the military domestically." Nothing in the text of the Insurrection Act says the president must cite insurrection, rebellion, or domestic violence to justify deployment; the language is so vague that Trump could potentially claim only that he perceives a "conspiracy."
The Insurrection Act, a blend of different statutes enacted by Congress between 1792 and 1871, is the primary exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, under which federal military forces are generally barred from participating in civilian law enforcement activities.
Most Americans may not realize how often presidents have invoked the Insurrection Act — often, in the view of historians, to the benefit of the nation. While it's been 32 years since Bush used it to help quell the Los Angeles riots, the Insurrection Act was also invoked by President Dwight Eisenhower following the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, when Ike deployed the 101st Airborne Division (with fixed bayonets on their rifles) to help desegregate the South. George Washington and John Adams used the Insurrection Act in response to early rebellions against federal authority, Abraham Lincoln invoked it at the start of the Civil War, and President Ulysses Grant used it to stop the Ku Klux Klan in the 1870s.
But when it comes to the next Trump administration, the real question for most military lawyers and personnel will likely be less purely legalistic and more ethical: Even if Trump decides something is legal and the courts back him up, are troops still bound to do as he says under the Constitution?
One lawyer, John Dehn of Loyola University — a former Army career officer and West Point graduate — calls this the "Milley problem," referring to the well-documented angst of the former Joint Chiefs chair during Trump's first presidency. Milley stirred controversy by publicly apologizing after Trump used him in a staged photo of the Lafayette Square incident. During the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, he reportedly assured then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi that he would "prevent" any unwarranted use of the military, and he has acknowledged calling his Chinese counterparts to assure them that no nuclear weapons would be launched before Trump left office.
Milley, who has called Trump "fascist to the core," later told Bob Woodward for the 2024 book War that he feared being recalled to active duty to face a court-martial "for disloyalty." At one point Trump himself suggested Milley could have been executed for treason.
In a newly published law review essay, Dehn argues that while Milley might have breached his constitutional duties, the Constitution "is not a suicide pact," and Milley served a higher purpose by protecting the nation. He quotes Thomas Jefferson as writing "strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen: but it is not the highest. [T]he laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation."
Similarly, some within the military community are urging troops to "lawyer up" and prepare to resist what they consider unethical orders, saying resistance can be justified if the soldier thinks it would jeopardize the soldier's own conception of military "neutrality."
"By refusing to follow orders about military deployment to U.S. cities for political ends, members of the armed forces could actually be respecting, rather than undermining, the principle of civilian control," wrote Marcus Hedahl, a philosophy professor at United States Naval Academy, and Bradley Jay Strawser, a scholar at the Naval Postgraduate School, in a blog post on Oct. 25.
Others within the military community disagree, sometimes vehemently. Such thinking is seriously misguided and could lead to widespread legal problems for military personnel, says retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap, a former deputy judge advocate general now at Duke Law School. "I am concerned because I do think there's been some mistaken information that's out there. The fact is, if an order is legal then members of the armed forces have to obey it even if they find it morally reprehensible."
In a Washington Post op-ed published after the election, another retired general, former Joint Chiefs Chair Martin Dempsey, agreed, saying it was "reckless" to suggest that "it is the duty of the brass to resist some initiatives and follow the 'good' orders but not the 'bad' orders that a president might issue."
Dunlap cites the military's standard Manual for Courts-Martial, which states clearly that "the dictates of a person's conscience, religion, or personal philosophy cannot justify or excuse the disobedience of an otherwise lawful order." Dunlap and other lawyers also note that Supreme Court precedent backs that up; in 1974 the Supreme Court ruled: "An army is not a deliberative body. It is the executive arm. Its law is that of obedience."
Inside the military this conundrum is known as "lawful but awful": Active-duty troops have no choice, especially if the order comes from the commander-in-chief. "No one should be encouraging members of the military to disobey a lawful order even if it's awful," says Nunn. "And it's crucial that is as it should be. We do not want to live in a world where the military picks and chooses what order to obey based on their own consciences. We don't want to ask a 20-year-old lieutenant to interpret an order from the president."
Indeed, that could set another dangerous precedent, some military lawyers say, by undermining the principle of civilian control that the Founders said was fundamental to the U.S. republic. "You don't have to look far for examples of countries where the military is picking and choosing which orders to follow," says Nunn.
Most legal experts agree that troops must obey all nominally legal orders. But military lawyers say it's important for troops to remember that even if called into action they must obey peoples' constitutional rights — including the right to assemble and to be protected from unlawful arrest and seizure or unreasonable force.
"You have to follow the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth amendments. They don't get waived," said Dehn. When it comes to the Fourth Amendment, for example, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, "the requirement of reasonableness applies" to the military just as it does to police, said Dehn. So do protections for due process and other rights of the accused enshrined in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.
"Due process still applies," Nunn agreed. "Military personnel deployed under the [Insurrection Act] can't do what law enforcement can't do. They can't shoot peaceful protesters."
Yale's Fidell says any successful legal challenges to Trump's orders will likely be more "retail than wholesale." By this he means that even if the president can broadly justify the Insurrection Act legally, "you might able to show a particular order is unlawful, for example if you're ordered to use your helicopter to create a downdraft to disperse rioters — remember that happened at Lafayette Square — or shoot at students."
In the end much will depend on what Trump's senior legal advisers tell him and what courts decide, lawyers say. But for the first time in memory, "we have to consider the possibility we could have a commander-in-chief who is willing to order the military to do something that is pretty threatening to the constitutional order," says Parsons, the West Point scholar.
"Even if we get the law straight, what's the right thing to do?" adds Parsons. "If the president invokes the Insurrection Act we don't really know what the ethical boundaries are. Among the military lawyers this is just uncharted territory."
Says one lawyer who has studied many cases of military-civilian conflict and spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears retribution from the new Trump administration: "I think things are going to be bad, really bad. This is going to be worse than last time. Trump is angry. He desperately wants to turn on his TV and see guys in uniform on the streets."
But Dunlap, for one, hopes that "cooler heads will prevail": "I'm cautiously optimistic that people are going to realize that not all the campaign rhetoric is going to be translatable into action."
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misspelled the title of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
View comments
Trolling, taunting, spamming, and off topic comments may be removed at the discretion of group mods. NT members that vote up their own comments, repeat comments, or continue to disrupt the conversation risk having all of their comments deleted. Please remember to quote the person(s) to whom you are replying to preserve continuity of this seed. Any use of the phrase "Trump Derangement Syndrome" or the TDS acronym in a comment will be deleted. Any use of the term "Brandon", "Traitor Joe", or any variations thereof, when referring to President Biden, will be deleted. Right wing trolls can expect to have their irrelevant questions and comments deleted. Posting debunked lies will be subject to deletion
Tags
Who is online
60 visitors
Like arresting his enemies and charging them with all kinds of dubious crimes
trump is probably going to need to assign at least six 24/7 bodyguards to every maga republican first ...
The Posse Comitatus Act wouldn't allow for that. It states that active duty military personnel cannot be used in a civil law enforcement role on US soil.
heh!
Do you think trmp cares about that? Or anything else coded in law?
Perhaps not, but the American people certainly do. I certainly do.
You're a patriot, Ed. I think most Americans care, but there's a percentage who don't.
...
But I wonder how much Trump cares about following the law?
Trump will certainly break the law.
We are left only the hope that military leaders will refuse illegal orders.
Historical precedents are not encouraging.
POS/POTUS is in office for less than a week, and there's already a backlog in the federal courts over his unconstitutional EO's ...
I see a lot of talk about what Trump would do, or wants to do, but Trump is going to find out how tolerant the electorate and the judiciary really will be if he gets out of hand and tramples on the right to due process. It's one thing to round up poor brown foreign people, but rounding up (or using violence on) middle class collage kids is a whole 'nother thing.
which I hope is very intolerant
meh, they've been trying to revise kent state history for almost 55 years. this is why trump wants hegseth running the DoD. unfortunately, hegseth is turning his senate hearing into a new definition of maga ... major assshole getting annihilated.
Agreed. I can see the courts stopping a lot of any actions that he might, according to all the prognostication, try to do.
why do you think trump tries to run everything thru SCOTUS now?
That's easy. He's certain they will rule in his favor and thus he gains more power. If they keep giving him more power there will be no need for a Legislative Branch or a Judicial Branch
LOL, maga SCOTUS justices will probably spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders ...
Exactly. Trump thinks the SCOTUS is his own personal court.
For at least the next 2 years, Trump has already eliminated the Legislative and Judicial branches. He walks around with them in his pocket.
To an extent, the majority of justices agree.
the 6 member maga rubber stamp club ...
I thought that was the plan?
He said there won't be any more elections.
mmmmmmm. No. I think that he told the Christian Nationalists that they won't need to vote again....
Is that a distinction without a difference?
When Donald Trump says, "You won't have to vote any more", I'm pretty sure he means it.
He has both Houses, the courts, and most states to help him get there.
Hence the distinction without a difference...
Yup.
I think that depends on the situation.
I remember seeing video of a security guard pepper spraying a group of college kids who were sitting in a circle holding hands as part of the Occupy movement. I think military response in that form would indeed spark outrage.
But if the "college kids" in question are doing that thing they've become famous for where they riot and try to call it a "peaceful protest", I think you'll find the electorate has seen quite enough of that and will not mind very much at all if action is taken.
Of course.
As it should.
You mean if criminals use a peaceful protest as cover for looting? We know how populists love to label everyone at such events as 'rioters' and think they all get off scott free. Guaranteed if bullets start flying and pretty blonde, blue eyed girls are laying bloody and/or dead in the streets those people on the sending end will eventually be held accountable, including those who gave the order.
No.
I mean when buildings and cars are on fire and people still claim it's "peaceful" because they're not personally committing the arson.
I mean when city leaders have declared a protest to be a riot and ordered people to disperse, but they don't.
I mean when people have a permit to protest at a given location and then decide to go on walkabout because they aren't getting enough attention, causing damage and disruption.
I mean when one group organizes a protest and then another group decides to organize a "counter protest", a huge fight breaks out and they try to act like surprised victims.
Let's don't pretend some of these "peaceful protesters" haven't behaved horribly, illegally, and violently while trying to hide behind the willingness of various bleeding hearts to believe their rationalizations or ridiculous claims to innocence.
I think that's an wildly unlikely scenario and would only happen as the result of a terrible accident. In which case, yes, people would be held accountable.
Peaceful protesters are just that. Those that are using peaceful protesting to set 'buildings and cars are on fire' are not. The right wing asshats that used the Minneapolis George Floyd protests to start the police station on fire in hopes of violent police response and a start of a race riot were apprehended and incarcerated. Two different groups of people at the same protest... The police handled it professionally as they should have. It did not require a military presence or assistance.
Also those in the community starting fires and looting during the George Floyd protests were also prosecuted. There were a few minors with no prior records that were given probation. Everyone else caught did jail time. It was the same across the country at the time too.
“Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.”
― Thomas Jefferson
“When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny." -Thomas Jefferson
This is exactly my point. Very obviously, many people who claim to be peaceful protesters often are not, and most of America is beyond tired of them pretending to be morally superior and therefore justified in whatever egregious actions they undertake. And yes, we're talking about some of those blue-eyed white girls.
This situation where left wing protesters are automatically defended for whatever they do is coming to an end, even if it is long overdue.
Your own data disproves this assertion. Only 120 people? There was over $2billion worth of damage over the summer of 2020 alone. That doesn't count the illegal blocking of public highways and lost revenue to local businesses, many of whom are small and cannot easily sustain it.
People have had more than enough of this nonsense, and as a result are more likely to tolerate a little better enforcement of law.
This idea that all left wing protesters are automatically 'rioters' is long past old.
But you think insured property damage is worth calling out the military to shoot people is the answer? That's what the article is talking about.
Protest is a form of civil disobedience. Protesters doing what they do should know they are breaking laws and also should know they can be held accountable. Blocking a public highway is a fine and civil record, not a death sentence. Running over people, or shooting them, for simply blocking a street in protest is asinine and NOT a form of democracy.
good luck convincing the "everything's better with guns" crowd ...
HA! The first thing to go will be the 2A.
heh, only one of my guns is registered. like their dumb ass flags say, come and take it ...
Good job nobody has said that, then.
I think a primary responsibility of any democratic government is to enforce the laws created by the citizens or their representatives and protect law abiding citizens from criminals.
Not usually.
Many protesters don't break the law. Maybe you've heard of this Constitution thing we have that guarantees their right to assemble (within limits). Many people get a permit, hold their protests, say what they want to say, and respect the rights of other people.
Unless of course you have an ambulance stuck in that traffic and the patient dies. In which case you have a defacto death sentence for the patient and a good case for felony criminal negligence against the shitheads blocking the road.
The thing the shitheads (and their apologists) don't like to hear is that the rest of us have the right to ignore them.
Good thing nobody has suggested that, then.
yeah that worked out real well last year, and the criminal gets inaugurated on monday ...
The bra size??? Ohhhh, I get it.
Nahh, there will just be stipulations.
There is no true difference in your distinction. They are all people. They are all in the united States of America, and therefore all have constitutionally protected rights.
This was settled law long ago. This is why the Guantanamo Bay Detainees were sent there instead of on US territory: If they held them on US territory, they would, per the Constitution, have to afford them the rights that every other person (not citizen, PERSON) is afforded while they are in the US.
Trump is antithetical to the concept of America, the concept of the Constitution, and the concept of rule of law.
I wonder how many white people will be rounded up and deported? There are illegals from European countries, too
[deleted][✘]
My wife is French. She‘s had a Green Card for ten years... but I don't think that would be a hindrance for the
GestapoICE.Back to Italy!
Out, out, damned spot!
There are sure to be demonstrations and civil unrest during Trump's inauguration and for a time afterwards. Most of the American people support Trump's agenda and there won't be many problems once the leftist thugs are taken care of by law enforcement
Untrue.
What a bullshit comment.
[✘]
Math isn't your strong suit... Trump won more votes than Harris, but he did not reach the over 50% required to be a majority.
POS/POTUS elect could have won the election by 1 vote and maga would be claiming a landslide and mandate.
True, hell, they claim he won when he got his ass kicked.
meh, trump got the majority of votes, the moron majority ...
... so, from moral majority to moron majority in just under 50 years ...
I'm starting to get the same feeling I got years ago when I saw the prairie dogs taking over the pasture ...
I was in LA during the riots and with the regular army there, the commander at that time was the right person to have in charge, he was able to keep it from spilling over with the army killing civilians.
In my years in the army I was never trained for crowd control or police type actions, you are trained for one thing and one thing only and that is to kill the enemy, IMO using the army or Marines to quell a riot or to enforce an order is pouring gas on a fire.
I believe that you will have a number of troops not obey the order.
Remember it would be putting army infantry/airborne or Marines all front line combat troops many with combat tours in a position that none of them want to be in, what could go wrong!!!!!!
It wouldn't take long for the country to descend into chaos were orders of this kind to be followed. I've long said it may take something of this type of magnitude for the country to again reject populist MAGA thinking.
Agreed.
the way that maga have been talking and acting out, it's probably going to take bloodshed to cull the unamerican scum out.
Ive debated on joining this discussion but have to point out a couple factors likely not thought about in your statement .
i doubt the forces will be deployed with the primary weapons they are use to being assigned , but instead will be handed a simple riot baton about 39 inches long , i can imagine the look on their faces when instead of a firearm , they are handed essentially a stick, and not a very big one at that . so there is that to think of.
All the combat troops you mentioned are very good at one thing , not just killing the enemy , for the most part they are very good at following orders , in this case it would be a 5 min briefing explaining the rules of engagement and what they could and couldn't do .
As for never being trained in crowd or riot control or police type action , Ever go into the pit with the funny looking stick with a couple boxing gloves tied to the ends ? pretty much the same thing but much more intense and aggressive, you likely were not told they could be applied in this situation , and likely never thought it could be . And the rules i mentioned about will be a limiting factor , no head shots , allowed hits would be limited to thighs , sides and back with maybe a forward thrust to center of mass in the frontal chest area . those sticks i mentioned above , hurt like hell without the padding .
Basically anyone who has been in the pit , has had a bare basic crash course in crowd / riot control, just not the finer points of finesse and technique.
as for those that would not follow orders such as imagined , that has really made planners, and annalists, both military and civilian take pause , there really is no way to make a statement one way or the other what individual troops would decide .
I tend to thank the Nuremburg trials for that , just following orders is not a valid excuse and hasnt been since then .
According to Espers they already had to walk Trump back from using bullets against protesters. The question before us is what will Trump do now that he has those that think like him in control?
I dont think its a question of what WILL he do with what he THINKS . but it falls to the question of what CAN he do that people will go along with .
I agree until you get to...
If Trump invokes the Insurrection Act arms and bullets are legal and...
if the leaders in charge on the ground are the ones that THINK like Trump we're fucked as a democracy.
This isn't to say I know what Trump is thinking or would do. Or even what the military would do. Until it actually happens it's all hypothetical.
The problem as I see it he doesn't have a Kelly or Milly to walk him back or talk him out of stuff. He's surrounded himself with yes men who don't know the law or the COTUS
The last two times the US military was used domestically they had their weapons and one time with fixed bayonets and I am familiar with the pit. Once a crowd get out of control and come at you in number with weapons the pit and the nicities go out the window. One will revert back to survival and that has no niceties involved.
Little Rock, Arkansas 1957, Loaded M-1 with fixed bayonets.
I agree. It's less about not knowing the law, but like Eastman did with the fake elector idea, going out of their way to bend the law to their way of thinking and expecting Congress and the courts to back them up.
Sounds to me like you expect a second civil war , and you think the military will just follow orders because a commander in chief says so .
I can think of a few checks and balances there .
Posse Com , even as diluted as it has become over the years , that is still in play .
Declarations of martial law hasnt change that much as to what is needed to invoke it . to do so still has criteria that needs to be met .
as for the military members itself . the officer corps never swear in their commisioning oaths to follow the orders of the commander in chief , instead they swear to uphold the Constitution , Officers are not beholden to ANY president but to the Constitution , how they define things are left to themselves in reality.
Enlisted members are kind of spitted , their oath does contain the part that they will follow all lawful orders of the commander in chief , and the officers appointed over them . they have to trust the officer corp to make a determination there , and if in the event they decide an order is unlawful and refuse to disobey it , they do so at their own risk and peril of trial under the UCMJ.
Yeah....they don't think we can think for ourselves. I really thought I sworn an oath to defend the USA against all enemies foreign and domestic and to uphold the Constitution
No, I don't expect one, but the possibility of one is still there. We are hyposisizing worst case scenarios here.
And I truly hope they stand. The likes of The Heritage Foundation have been working for years to errode those checks and balances and now they have 'their guy' in power and their people writing policy for him. Trump and his Defense pick have talked about rooting out military commanders that don't pledge fealty. We have no other choice now, but to see how it all plays out.
meh, watching maga tell armed military personnel to do something unconstitutional could prove entertaining ...
as soon as some republicans figure out there's a fate worse than being opposed to the maga cult leader, things will change ...
what CAN he do that people will go along with
Define “people”. I believe that there are “people” right here on this forum who would be fine with Trump giving orders to shoot to kill anyone who protests anything Trump orders.
it's important for people that enforce any of trump's unconstitutional edicts against american citizens to understand that it could be a lot worse for them than just a career decision ...
Sorry , i havent signed in and checked for a couple days .
"define people" , in the context of the seeded article , my use of the word "people " is and would usually be construed to mean the people directly affected . in this case members of the military in uniform and on active duty . since they are the ones being discussed as to what their actions may be .
a criminal/traitor POTUS that attempts to direct the US military to take up arms against american citizens will be a pretty simple choice ...
Where did you get this silly idea?
the silly POS cult leader attending his coronation paid for by billionaires today ...
You make no sense, what do billionaires have to do with the Military taking up arms against their Citizens,[✘]
Well you are entitled to your opinion , it does appear to me that others dont share that opinion, which is their right .
[Removed, member not the topic][✘]
POS/POTUS had already suggested it as a solution to protestors in his last term ...
I am, I don't care what those with due process blinders on think, and I respect their right to be willfully ignorant.
Please give me the link for transcript for that quote.
do your own internet search ...
It's from Trump's Def Sec Esper's book A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times -
When you claim people to have said something, you should back it up. I'll take that you don't have one, other than hearsay from some disgruntled schmuck.
I understand you didn't see it on FOX, but I think you meant trump appointees, which both of the witnesses were ...
No, not at all. Give me the transcript of the words coming from Trump's mouth, otherwise don't waste my time.
... taking the word of 2 highly respected and ranking public officials appointed by trump, versus the word of a proven liar and convicted fraud. I can imagine what a very difficult choice to make, as well as rational hurdle to clear, for his most loyal supporters ... /s
they won't believe anything from media outlets that aren't officially maga certified ...
It’s interesting that on another article praising Hegbeth for SoD they are all talking about improving the military and it’s fighting capability, yet only two of the posters have ever served in the military, i guess that the plague of bone spurs was a plague among the righties on NT.
don't you remember? wars are how some republicans get rid of minorities and those with opposing political opinions ... /s
when trump tramples the constitution, he'll nullify the rule of law, and possibly trigger a surgical type of civil war ...
... and I plan on defending the US constitution from domestic enemies.
I'll be excited to see the reaction by maga when they discover the revenge and retribution door swings in both directions ...
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
maga SOP - overstep the boundaries, then over correct by opening a door they can't close ...
create the problem, blame the democrats for the problem, then provide a solution that creates more problems ...
Trump will not obey the law. End of story.
He never has. Why should he start now?
Exactly. People are still imagining that the rule of law applies in America... while MAGA Brownshirts are being pardoned for their assaults on the law.
Crazy.
J6 traitor season has opened early ... ... cool.
The worst of them, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, will go back and do something violently stupid again and go right back to prison. They can't help themselves. A couple may even darwin award each other as they are want to do at times.
all of the J6 traitors have their names, addresses, and pictures posted on the internet. ... cool.
Why do you imagine that they will not be pardoned, again and again?
Why do you assume they will be prosecuted in the first place?
These are America's equivalents to Germany's Brown Shirts. The Brown Shirts committed all sorts of crimes, but were never bothered by the police. This is Trump's America... and therefore theirs.
Here's the left wing's protected form the the law domestic terrorist of the day:.
Thanks to lobbying from Democrats like Jerry Nadler, Bill Clinton pardoned weather underground terrorist Susan Rosenberg who bombed the US Senate offices as part of her campaign to overthrow the US Government. To this day, elected democrats like Nadler, AOC and other squad members happily take her money without any pushback from Democrats.
Maybe Bill Ayers tomorrow. So many to pick from.
Start with Trump, he pardoned 4 convicted murders that killed 17 innocent Iraq citizens. Think there is a connection to Black Rock?
If some dumbass gets something violent states away, why would Trump know or care? Would he even know?
Almost all the people in our justice system from cops to judges care about upholding the law. They were found and prosecuted before, I expect nothing else in the future.
Bob, your post is partisan supposition. There is no supporting evidence a justice system that arrested, tried and convicted them before wouldn't do it again
Is Trump left wing now? Are those soldiers? Are they domestic terrorists/insurrectionists? Or do you not understand what I wrote?
Why would I "start with Trump" when describing domestic terrorists/revolutionaries protected by Democrats?
You mean, "No supporting evidence other than the massive, immediate pardon of MAGA Brownshirts."
You use no logic, only invective emotion. BoB, I love you like a brother from another mother, but damn... when you pull shit out of the ether like this it's hard to be on your side. Don't make it look like I'm supporting the far right wing. I don't like it.
Of course I understand what you wrote, geez Sean please try to do better.
They were US contractors hired by the DoD that acted as murderers and terrorists and by starting with Trump you would give yourself some credibility, pardons and lack of credibility are his strong points.
Quacks like a duck...
Ummmm.... K?
Are you hoping for an intellectually honest answer, here?
Seriously?
Not really just pointing out the failure of his arguement.
Oh. That's reassuring...
Bounty time, I hope !
bushido, samurai style ...
Trumps ordered -
Using the term repelling forms of invasion is something that has people scratching their head and thinking this might be where Trump steps on his dick and makes illegal orders. NORTHCOM has 10 days to submit a plan of action and I'm sure they will be able to tell the interim DefSec and Trump what they can and cannot legally do.
Trump is also in the works to formally classify Mexican Drug Cartels - Terrorists. This changes a routine law enforcement issue into a DHS and possible military one. I know that kind of thing went super well for the Reagan Admin when they had the CIA fuck around in Central America so we'll see how the new Orbanesque Trump will proceed.
Do you think trmp will abide by what he can and cannot do legally?
I'm relatively confident the military will abide until Trump starts purging unit commanders.
he's digging a political hole that maga republicans won't be able to climb out of next year. call the bulldozers ...
I'm hoping for somebody that still takes their oath to defend the constitution seriously ...
Defying Trump would be putting one's career on the line. When you see how Trump has treated very senior general officers, a captain or a major would have to be very courageous.
Remember the Vindman twins?
The military isn't anymore monolithic as any other organization. Some will take the path of least resistance, some will agree with Trump and some will put their oath above illegal orders.
Certainly.
Then Trump will destroy the careers of those who do not obey him... leaving only those who do.
they probably won't have very long careers if trump succeeds ...
Perfect time for an inside job? Take the fall and save us all!
future medal of freedom recipients AFAIC ...
He might try. You've thrown in the towel already and it's only been 8 days. Let's revisit in 8 months and see where all this bullshit is really going.
I'll wait 5 months before I start provoking maga morons where I'm at, and then it's fun in the sun ...
I read this morning ICE detained a US Veteran in Newark for the simple fact he was Hispanic.
Hispanic or Black.
While breathing.
Criminal activity.
ICE raided a home depot near my son and hauled off a dozen people. when did that thumper CEO turn democrat? LOL ...
Trump has his first DEI hire in his administration, Pete Hegseth he has no qualifications except loyalty to Trump with a bit of stupid thrown in.
correction, hegseth is an MDM hire. a mentally defective maga ...
What I find really disturbing is American, supposedly the bastion of freedom and democracy has a president that now is going around threating our allies with invasion if they don’t comply with his wishes.
Greenland, Panama small countries that have been allies for decades, Mexico and Canada our two biggest trading partners and strong allies with two of the countries being members of NATO. It is incomprehensible to me that this is happening and also the support he gets from MAGA, I guess our founding fathers and constitution mean little to this fricking dumb skulls.
This Manifest Destiny dream is really a nightmare that is going to come back and bite us in the ass, hard.
It one thing to threaten Panama with invasion if they don’t comply with Trumps crazy demands it’s whole other thing to threaten a power like China with invasion. Speaking of which I’d like to see China’s reaction to us invading Panama and taking the cannel back.
Sadly, this is where we are at as a country.
ummm....
Did Hitler use threats on Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia before he invaded?
trump is a moron and he's determined to impose his own type of isolationism by alienating our allies ...
He threatened Austria and Czechoslovakia. Hungary was an ally of Germany.
Thanks for the info
what about me?
thanks also
LOL