|
| Former President Trump's allies are pre-screening the
| ideologies of thousands of potential foot soldiers, as part
| of an unprecedented operation to centralize and expand his
| power at every level of the U.S. government if he wins in
| 2024, officials involved in the effort tell Axios.
| ...
<https://www.axios.com/2023/11/13/trump-loyalists-2024-presidential-election>

And this explains Tuberville's "hold" on military officers.

Of course our resident whackjobs can't wait for this. They
so want to be told what to do by Trump's God Squad.

--bks

>
> |
> | Former President Trump's allies are pre-screening the
> | ideologies of thousands of potential foot soldiers, as part
> | of an unprecedented operation to centralize and expand his
> | power at every level of the U.S. government if he wins in
> | 2024, officials involved in the effort tell Axios.
> | ...
><https://www.axios.com/2023/11/13/trump-loyalists-2024-presidential-
electi
>on>
>
>And this explains Tuberville's "hold" on military officers.
>
>Of course our resident whackjobs can't wait for this. They
>so want to be told what to do by Trump's God Squad.
>
> --bks
>

Trump deserves the death penalty for Treason.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/donald-trump-15-most-
dangerous-statements/675970/

November 13, 2023
Trump Isn�t Merely Unhinged

Many of his recent statements illustrate a profoundly un-American set of
ideas.
November 13, 2023, 7:30 AM ET

With apologies to a certain newspaper�s slogan, many of Donald Trump�s
most dangerous statements hide in the plain light of day.

The problem is not that they don�t get reported on�they do�but even so,
they are easy to tune out, perhaps because he�s been saying outlandish
things for so long that people simply can�t bring themselves to parse the
new ones; or perhaps because they�ve become accustomed, or at least numb,
to his utterances; or perhaps because they don�t want to let him occupy
their headspace; or perhaps because he got kicked off Twitter (now X) and
they had no interest in joining Truth Social. Or maybe it�s because the
more sinister material gets mixed up with his strange elocutions (�We�re
gonna have a great country�it�s gonna be called the United States of
America�), contrarian hot takes (�You know, Hezbollah is very smart.
They�re all very smart�), and gibberish (�All of these indictments that
you see�I was never indicted. Practically never heard the word. It wasn�t
a word that registered�).

From the November 2023 issue: How we got �democracy dies in darkness�

Whatever the case may be, Trump has continued to make plainly dangerous
and stunning remarks. Notwithstanding his rival Governor Ron DeSantis�s
recent claim that Trump has �lost the zip on his fastball,� the former
president continues to produce substantive ideas�which is not to say they
are wise or prudent, but they are certainly more than gibberish. In fact,
much of what Trump is discussing is un-American, not merely in the sense
of being antithetical to some imagined national set of mores, but in that
his ideas contravene basic principles of the Constitution or other bedrock
bases of American government.

They are the sorts of ideas that would have been shocking to hear from any
mainstream politician just a decade ago. And yet, today, Trump�arguably
the single most influential figure in the United States�says these things,
and they hardly register. Consider the following examples, all from just
the past few months:
1. Promised to destroy the federal government as we know it.

Trump has been promising in speeches to �demolish the deep state.� What he
means by that is to end the federal government as it exists today,
eliminating the civil-service jobs that have been in place since the late
19th century. This is clear because former Trump aides who are designing
the effort, part of a sort of shadow government housed at conservative
think tanks, are open about what they have in mind, as my colleague
Russell Berman reports: a federal workforce that can be fired by the
president at will and must follow his personal whims. That would be a
major departure from the current system, where employees are permanent
professionals who work for administrations of both parties and are meant
to focus on effective implementation, rather than political hacks chosen
for their loyalty.
2. Argued that a presidential candidate should be immune from prosecution.

While attempting to dodge the 91 criminal indictments against him, Trump
argued in a July 10 court filing that he shouldn�t have to deal with the
hassle of a federal trial, because running for president �requires a
tremendous amount of time and energy.� This goes directly against the idea
that no U.S. citizen is above the law.
3. Insulted and attempted to intimidate judges, prosecutors, witnesses,
and others.

Trump hasn�t just made arguments in court related to the criminal and
civil cases against him; he has also produced a steady stream of invective
directed at anyone involved in the cases, to the point of seeking to
intimidate witnesses, court staff, and even prosecutors� family members.
Subjects of his threats include the federal judge Tanya Chutkan; New York
Justice Arthur Engoron; Engoron�s law clerk (for which Trump was slapped
with a gag order); New York Attorney General Letitia James, including his
inscrutable and maybe racist nickname for her; Mark Meadows, the former
White House chief of staff and a possible witness; Special Counsel Jack
Smith; and even Smith�s wife, a documentary filmmaker. Smith�s team
successfully convinced Chutkan that some of these infractions could
threaten the likelihood of a fair trial, and she ordered Trump to stop,
though she permitted him to attack her and President Joe Biden, among
others, and to call his prosecution political. Trump appealed the order
but lost, then promptly attacked another potential witness, former
Attorney General Bill Barr. (An appeals court has now paused the order
once more.)
4. Continued to claim that the election was stolen.

Trump continues to insist, despite presenting no real evidence and losing
every relevant court case, that he actually won the 2020 election. �I
don�t consider us to have much of a democracy right now,� he said on Meet
the Press on September 17. Perversely, Trump now has some incentive to
keep lying about the election rather than acknowledge that he lost: Part
of Smith�s case is premised on the idea that Trump knew he had been
defeated. A functioning democracy depends on the consent of the losers;
throughout U.S. history, losers of elections have sometimes grumbled
fiercely and other times taken losses gracefully, but none has ever tried
to stay in office and then continued to claim he was the rightful winner
in the manner Trump has.

Read: Democracy depends on the consent of losers
5. Excused the January 6 riot.

On Meet the Press and elsewhere, Trump has continued to excuse the riot on
January 6, 2021, and to argue that people charged in the riots are
political prisoners. He told the Meet the Press moderator, Kristen Welker,
that he might pardon people convicted of federal crimes for their
involvement in the assault on the seat of U.S. government: �Well, I�m
going to look at them, and I certainly might if I think it�s appropriate.
No, it�s a very, very sad thing. And it�s�they�re dividing the country so
badly, and it�s very dangerous.� He has since referred to these people as
�hostages,� a description that makes sense only if you find the very idea
of policing the insurrection illegitimate.
6. Entertained pardoning himself.

Trump also continues to flirt with the idea of granting himself a pardon,
typically saying he doesn�t see any need for it but refusing to rule it
out. Most mainstream scholars say a self-pardon is probably not
constitutional and certainly not something the framers intended.
7. Menaced American Jews for not voting for him.

During Rosh Hashanah, on September 17, Trump shared a meme that read,
�Just a reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel
because you believed false narratives! Let�s hope you learned from your
mistake & make better choices going forward!� As my colleague Yair
Rosenberg wrote, Trump has often made such offensive remarks about the
loyalties�perceived or desired�of American Jews, but this was
�particularly ugly in the way it deliberately singled out a specific
constituency during that constituency�s holiest season.�
8. Suggested executing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

Apparently outraged by the Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg�s
profile of General Mark Milley, whom Trump appointed chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Trump on September 22 accused Milley of treason and
suggested that he deserved the death penalty. �This guy turned out to be a
Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually
dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the
President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times
gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!� Trump wrote. Trump�s loose
and sloppy treason accusations have always undermined the Constitution,
and many past comments like this have precipitated threats and even
attacks from Trump supporters.
9. Accused NBC of treason and threatened to pull it off the air.

Trump has never had any interest in upholding the First Amendment, but his
remarks on September 24 were unusually sharp. Trump wrote that NBC News,
and especially MSNBC, �should be investigated for its �Country Threatening
Treason.� Why should NBC, or any other of the corrupt & dishonest media
companies, be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE?
They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE
PEOPLE!� This sort of demonization of the press is dangerous per se�as
demonstrated by attacks on journalists�as are Trump�s casual accusations
of treason, but this one carries a clear threat to try to use the power of
the federal government to punish a news organization for reporting he
doesn�t like. This contradicts even the most limited, basic understanding
of the importance of a free press, as protected by the First Amendment.
(Set aside the dissonance of saying this shortly after granting an in-
depth interview to NBC News!)
10. Promised to lock up political opponents.

>> | Former President Trump's allies are pre-screening the
>> | ideologies of thousands of potential foot soldiers, as part
>> | of an unprecedented operation to centralize and expand his
>> | power at every level of the U.S. government if he wins in
>> | 2024, officials involved in the effort tell Axios.

|
| Donald Trump Has Serious Plans for the Mass Violations of
| Civil Rights
| ...
<https://jacobin.com/2023/11/donald-trump-mass-violations-civil-rights-immigration-authoritarianism>

--bks