Trump: one man above the law
Donald Trump has normalized his high crimes and misdemeanors. That’s the defining feature of his presidency. And only that explains him getting off scot-free at his impeachment trial earlier this year, especially after House managers presented a mountain of evidence against him.
To be fair, though, Trump telegraphed this feat. After all, he famously boasted on the campaign trail in 2016 that he could murder someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any support. Sure enough, he has tested and proven that proposition time and again.
Still, you’d be forgiven for thinking, or hoping against hope, that the country is finally at a proverbial inflection point. That is, given the confluence of a global health pandemic, 1930s-like economic malaise, and 1960s-like civil-rights protests. Yet iPINIONS fears that when even Trump’s own generals are calling for his removal, America’s democracy is already critically wounded.
Trump’s generals are sounding alarms about him
President Donald Trump is facing an unprecedented revolt from the elite corps of ex-military leaders and presidents over his brazen response to mass protests and inflaming of racial divides.
In a true Washington bombshell on Wednesday evening, former Defense Secretary James Mattis, a warrior revered by his troops, told Americans they must come together without the President.
(CNN, June 4, 2020)
I see no point in listing all the decorated, even if unsung, generals who have answered this call of duty. Instead, I shall suffice to share how two of those who worked closest with and longest for Trump are now leading the charge against him.
Firstly, here is how Gen. Mattis framed this revolt in a galvanizing statement published in The Atlantic on June 3:
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When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside. …
We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.
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Incidentally, I owe a profound clarification. In my commentary on June 4, I suggested that serving military leaders would be more inclined to take cues from retired ones like Mattis than orders from the certifiable buffoon currently serving as their commander-in-chief.
Evidently, a surprising number of you deduced from “cues” a conspiracy afoot to mount a coup against Trump. Perhaps this is owing to personal experiences living in countries where military men acted accordingly. And, granted, Trump’s Kool-Aid-drinking, evangelical supporters would probably stone them as heretics if they heard these general venting the contempt they clearly have for this draft-dodging, warmongering president.
But I assure you, nothing of the sort could have been further from my mind. In fact, I spelled out what “cues” I had in mind in the final paragraph of that same commentary.
Moreover, they happen to be the same cues Mattis mined throughout his historic statement. He wrote, for example, that those serving should reject Trump’s attempts to
- frame American cities as “battlespaces” to be “dominated”;
- set up “a false conflict — between the military and civilian society”; and
- break the inviolable trust that law and order in America rests with civilian, not military authority.
That clarified, secondly, here is how Gen. Kelly saluted and endorsed Mattis’s take, as reported on yesterday’s edition of Fox News Headline Flash no less:
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President Trump’s former chief of staff Gen. John Kelly said he agreed with former Defense Secretary James Mattis when he released a statement attacking the president’s leadership and describing Trump as a threat to the Constitution.
‘I think we need to look harder at who we elect,’ Kelly said during a Friday interview with former [Trump] White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci.
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I would end at this point with “Enough said?” Except that my old college roommate wasted no time in sharing yesterday’s breaking news that Gen. Colin Powell will be joining the ranks of those ex-military leaders, too. He’s scheduled to appear on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper tomorrow.
My old buddy was effectively chastising me for calling out Powell in “AWOL: General Colin Powell, America Needs to Hear Your Voice” on June 3. But here is how I responded to his breaking news of this big pending event:
Well I suppose he finally heard my call. Still, I’m stupefied that nobody else found his AWOL all week odd, if not disappointing. I mean, what is he going to say on Sunday that Mattis and other generals, to say nothing of Obama and other politicians, haven’t already said.
He’s like the cavalry showing up after all the fighting is done. SMH!
(ALH iPhone – Friday 7:21 PM)
So nice to see ya, Colin. But where the hell have you been?!
Beware the wrath of an impeached or cornered president
Meanwhile, Trump is still a cornered, scaredy cat who can hurt us in all kinds of ways.
In fact, with all due respect to these armchair generals, what America may need right now is an A-team of Trump whisperers who can stroke this feral cat and
- shelter him from political storms portending his doom;
- keep his paws off those nuclear buttons; and
- sing him swan songs about how much better his life will be once a Biden inauguration releases him from his presidential cage.
You get the idea.
However, coming full circle, Biden is right to warn that we can recover (body and soul) from one term of Trump’s norm-busting presidency. But
If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are, and I cannot stand by and watch that happen.
(The New York Times, April 25, 2019)
Nor, evidently, can the millions of Americans now protesting in the streets and the ex-military leaders (of all political stripes) coming out of the woodwork stand by and watch.
Related commentaries:
AWOL: Powell… covid-19 thread…
Floyd protests thread… Biden 2020…
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