Would U.S. Generals Obey Illegal Trump Orders?
Some would argue the answer is yes because they already have by blowing up boats in the Caribbean.
So a better question is “To what extreme?”
Unfortunately, some people will stop reading right now. They will not want to hear what I have to say.
Question of the Day
Please read Would U.S. Generals Obey Illegal Trump Orders? by David Frum on The Atlantic.
By saying “The Atlantic”, I will lose another set of closed-minded individual.
The thing is, I seldom agree with anything on the The Atlantic. This is a major exception. I can argue against some aspects. But not against all of it. This is a very worthwhile read.
Frum kicks off the discussion. Then Frum introduces Tom Nichols, an expert on U.S. military policy who taught first at Dartmouth College, then at the U.S. Naval War College.
Nichols is a lifelong Republican.
These are excerpts from a full translation of the podcast (the above link).
One of the more annoying and more pointless aspects of the Trump era is what I call politicized stupidity. Politicized stupidity is a kind of aggressive not getting the point by people who are otherwise perfectly well equipped to getting the point.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. So President Trump has just demolished the East Wing of the White House. He did this without any form of consultation, as if the White House were his personal property, and in order to build a giant ballroom that there’s no demonstration of need for and that, again, he’s treating as a point of personal property. He’s choosing the design; there’s no process of respect for historical or cultural integrity. And he’s financing this whole project.
And he is proposing to pay for this project—that is chosen entirely by himself with no consultation—by accepting donations from corporations and wealthy individuals. He has people who have business before the government, who seek favors before the government: Some of them have mergers that they’re hoping for approval. Others are in the crypto industry that has received a massive government favor in the form of the GENIUS Act and who are hoping for more favors. Others of whom are in business with members of the Trump family. If the country needed a ballroom, then there should have been a review process, a design process, and Congress should pay for it out of public revenues because it’s the People’s House, not Donald Trump’s house.
Okay, you get that. But there are people who insist on not getting it. There are people who say, Well, are you against ballrooms? Don’t you think the White House ever needs renovation? Other presidents have renovated the White House in the past. The point is not that you are for or against renovations, of course; the point is you are for or against not treating the White House as a person’s property. But there’s a kind of deliberate refusal to get the point, and you see this in many places in our public media. It’s the same when Donald Trump delivers a pardon to a crypto criminal, a convicted crypto criminal, who has helped to enrich his family.
No one has ever pardoned people because they gave money to his family, his sons, his relatives. No one has ever delivered pardons because he just seems to have a general attitude of being pro-white-collar criminals. No one has ever said, I’m pardoning this convicted fraudster congressman because he always voted for my political party and always supported me, and that is the one and only grounds and basis of my pardoning this figure. But people insist on not getting that point: Biden used an autopen; isn’t that the same? No, it’s not? Well, I refuse to understand why it’s not.
And no one has ever said, I’m imposing tariffs on one of America’s closest allies, Canada, because I’m upset that they made a TV ad that implied that Ronald Reagan was a better president than I am.
[Frum-Nichols Discussion starts]
Frum: Imagine yourself—I don’t know that such a thing could ever happen—but imagine yourself a malign and criminally intended president who wanted to remake the U.S. military as a tool of personal power. How would you go about doing it?
Nichols: In this system of government in the United States, the first thing I would do is seize the Justice Department. And by seize, I don’t mean being elected and nominating an attorney general; I mean flushing out all of the people committed to the Constitution, the rule of law—you know, the lawyers. It’s almost a trope now to do the Merchant of Venice line, but you start with getting rid of the lawyers, if you’re going to do these kinds of things, and you replace it with your cronies. You replace it with people that are going to be loyal to you.
Frum: So the first move at the Pentagon is not at the Pentagon; it’s across the river at the Justice Department.
Nichols: Exactly. Because if you’re a military officer, the people that you’re gonna want an opinion from are lawyers—which is the next step, which is you not only get rid of the lawyers at the Justice Department; you do what Trump’s already done: You get rid of the top lawyers of the Pentagon.
And look, the rule of law requires lawyers and people to interpret the law, and the first people you have to get rid of are anybody who says, My loyalty is to the rule of law, the statutes as written, the Constitution, and not to Donald Trump.
Frum: If you’re a three-star or a four-star general and you have a question, Is this a legal or an illegal order?, who do you ask?
Nichols: Well, you would ask the top legal service adviser in your branch, but Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Trump have fired them all.
Remember that officers are required to begin from the presumption of legality with an order. The system is designed to make sure that the chain of command functions effectively so that if you’re a colonel or a one-star or a two-star, you have to assume that if the order has come down from the president to the secretary, the advice of the chairman—the chairman’s not actually in the chain of command, but he gives advice—and by the time it gets to you, the assumption is: Well, this must be legal because all these other guys wouldn’t have ordered me to do it.
Frum: So if you get an order to blow up a fishing boat in the Caribbean or the Pacific, you would start with, Well, somebody must have signed off on this. They must have—
Nichols: Somebody signed off, exactly. And the place it should have stopped, of course, is: The attorney general, the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs should all be standing in the Oval Office, saying, You can’t do this. This isn’t legal. This is a violation of both American and international law. And if the president says, Well, go ahead, just do it, well, by the time it gets to that lieutenant commander in a helicopter or piloting a drone, he or she’s already saying—well, as you just said, David—Somebody must have signed off on this.
Frum: Well, the president of Colombia has charged that at least one of the destroyed boats was a fishing vessel with completely innocent people aboard. Now, the present president of Colombia is kind of a flaky character and certainly someone with strong anti-American feelings, so take that as it may. On the other hand, it would be a pretty bold lie to tell, that it’s a fishing boat, because the United States could refute it.
Nichols: Now, the thing is, Donald Trump learned—as we painfully know—he learned from his first term. He’s making sure that there isn’t going to be anybody in that room who’s gonna say, Mr. President, it’s a bad idea. What you’re doing isn’t legal.
Frum: How does the National Guard fit into the chain of command? We remember in his first term, Trump wanted to use the National Guard or other military personnel to shoot lawful demonstrators. He suggested shooting them in the knees.
Nichols: Once again—and we know this, again, from the first term—in the first term, it was the secretary of defense and the chairman, again, walking in and saying, Mr. President, don’t do this. This is a bad idea. The National Guard answers to the governor of the state they’re in until the president orders them federalized. And, of course, that’s been the source of multiple court cases, some of which the Trump administration keeps losing or running into injunctions—
Frum: Because you can’t just do it as an act of power. You have to show some basis—
Nichols: Right. You can’t just say, Today, I feel like nationalizing our federal guard—the National Guard, excuse me.
The president has huge amounts of latitude here, which is why he’s going after the National Guard because, obviously, when he talks about using the regular military, then he has to talk about—I mean, we’ve run into Posse Comitatus and the Insurrection Act. That’s why, I think, he’s talking about invoking the Insurrection Act.
Frum: So I wanna go back: Who has the mission? So the South Carolina or Texas National Guard is called up, sent to a blue state, and is told something like, We think a lot of the people in this lineup in this swing suburb are probably illegal aliens. And we think they should be detained for 12, 14, 16 hours, or ’til whenever the polls close. Your order is to go detain these people we believe are illegal aliens—I mean, they’re Democrats; they might as well be illegal aliens—detain them and hold them until the polls close. Who has the mission to say, That sounds like kind of an illegal order to me?
Nichols: Well, but they’re being much more clever about it than that. The mission to detain those people and to disrupt those operations goes to ICE. And then the president says, This being a federal agency, I’m not using the military to detain any of these people. I’m simply using the military to protect these other federal agencies while they do their job—
Frum: —of detaining everyone in the voting line—
Nichols: Of detaining everybody in line. It’s very clever. They say, We’re not doing domestic policing. We’re simply securing federal installations, protecting federal employees because the state or the local municipality either can’t or won’t do it.
And I’ll just add one more thing, David. I never thought the Epstein files were important until Trump started acting like they were important. Why do we think the Epstein files are radioactive? Because Trump’s acting like it.
Frum: Well, let’s revert to this conflict in the Caribbean, the Pacific, and Trump has mused about taking it to land. And Venezuela seems to be target A; Colombia has also been indicated as a target.
How much legal authority would a president need to start carrying out land targeting of cartel operations?
Nichols: More than he has now. Trump is arguing that I can simply determine a threat, point the military at it, and say, “Destroy this.” That is not what Article II says. That is not what the Constitution says.
And I think, first of all, can we just step back and say, What happened to the guy who said, I’m not gonna start any more “stupid wars” like all my predecessors?
We’re talking about invading Central America, Latin America? It’s bonkers. But I don’t think that he has anything like the legal authority to do this—but that would require a Congress that actually meets and functions as a Congress.
Why not counterfeiters? Why not bootleggers? Why drug black marketeers? Why not just start killing anybody that you happen to think is doing something bad to the United States? And I think he’s doing this—well, I think the link between what he’s doing overseas and the link to domestic politics is very clear. He’s trying to establish the precedent that the military will do what he says, kill the people he wants killed, and undertake the operations he wants undertaken, no matter where they are.
Frum: And I think with the drug case, he’s also trying to make Americans falsely believe, as he often does, that their domestic problems are the fault of foreigners.
Nichols: Of other people, right.
Frum: One of my favorite drug war stories is a story that is told both by Daniel Patrick Moynihan and by George Shultz in their respective memoirs. But the story is that Daniel Patrick Moynihan—you probably know the story—was the first federal drug czar in the Nixon administration. That is, Nixon created an office in the White House, Office of National Drug Control Policy, Moynihan was put in charge, and he became known as the drug czar. And in 1971, the United States executes the largest—in cooperation, I think, with the French police—the largest drug bust in the history of the world to that date: the famous French Connection that became the basis of the Gene Hackman movie—
Nichols: Popeye Doyle, baby.
Frum: So Moynihan is very excited when he gets word, and he commands a helicopter to take him to Camp David to brief the president personally about this tremendous victory, and as he gets into the helicopter, there is Secretary of Labor George Shultz, with the big helicopter earmuffs, reading the Financial Times or The Wall Street Journal. And Moynihan, over the helicopter communication device, just gushes with enthusiasm: We’ve just completed the biggest drug interception in the history of the world. And Shultz, utterly uninterested, says, Congratulations. Nice job. You don’t understand, says Moynihan. This is the biggest drug bust in the history of the world.Good, [says Shultz], congratulations. And Moynihan’s a little hurt, a little crestfallen. And then he remembers, before Shultz went into government, he taught economics at the University of Chicago: George, I imagine you think that so long as there’s a demand for drugs in the United States, there will be a supply from somewhere. And Shultz now looked up interested for the first time and said, There may be hope for you after all.
Nichols: It’s a great story.
Frum: —and the point is, Americans were dying in very large numbers from fentanyl overdoses in the teens. It came to a peak in 2020. And then, thanks to different policies, thanks to the availability of drugs that interfere with drug overdoses, those numbers have come down a little bit. But it remains an article of faith to Trump and the people around him and especially to Vice President J. D. Vance: This is something that bad foreigners have done to Americans, not that Americans are doing to themselves. And if we can only punish the foreigners enough, virtuous Americans will not be lured into drug dependency. But that’s, of course, not how it works. It’s the demand that brings forth the supply. It’s a domestic problem.
Frum: The War on Drugs—I think we didn’t use so much War on Drugs analogy—the logic of the “Just Say No” campaign that was publicized by Nancy Reagan was, that was an attempt to address demand. It’s a triangle—there are three basic remedies, or outcomes, to the drug problem. One is you attack supply. The second is you attack demand. And the third is you learn to live with the drugs. And all of them are evil, right? Learning to live with the drugs means Americans suffer and die in preventable numbers. Dealing with the demand means that Americans go to prison because you punish both the low-level dealers and the users. And the supply means that you end up at war with the rest of the planet and trying to put your fingers in infinite numbers of holes in dikes as the drugs flow in. All of them are imperfect, and sound policy begins with some kind of balance.
Mish: To reiterate … Dealing with supply “means that you end up at war with the rest of the planet and trying to put your fingers in infinite numbers of holes in dikes as the drugs flow in.”
Sinking a few boats, illegally or not, in Venezuela or Columbia is not going to do a damn thing to halt supply.
Frum: But the Trump policy is to say, Look, we are going to blame entirely suppliers, and not only suppliers, but foreign suppliers, and we’re going to kill them, and we are going to imagine that this is doing something, when, of course, as George Shultz will tell us—
Mish: Nichols now gets to the real point of it all: Politicized stupidity obscures the real threat. What’s it really about?
Nichols: That’s because it’s not about drugs. I’m convinced that this policy in Central America is not about drugs, David. I think it’s about—
Frum: Training the military to do bad things.
Nichols: Right. I don’t think Donald Trump cares a whit about fentanyl and drugs coming into the United States. I think Donald Trump lives in a world where everything is graded in terms of How does this affect me and help me and help my political fortunes? And other people—J. D. Vance knows better. He tried to set up a nonprofit about this and then kind of walked away from it. Everybody knows that this is not the game. And I think it’s not just to blame it on foreigners, which, of course, is a classic kind of MAGA world grievance issue, right? If you’re unemployed, it’s because of the Chinese. If your kid is in the basement playing video games all day, it’s because of evil programmer somewhere. If your kid’s taking drugs, it’s ’cause of the Mexicans.
Every time Trump seems to run into something he can’t solve, you can almost see him saying, Well, maybe the Army can do this.
I think there’s two reasons for it. One is, he is childlike; he is fascinated by displays of military power in the way an 8-year-old is. But also he’s figured out, the whole rest of the federal bureaucracy can slow-roll him, can object, can rat him out to Congress. He is really counting on the military to be the people who keep his secrets, execute his orders, do what they’re told. I would really like to know why this four-star in charge of Southcom retired early. If it was under protest, I think he should tell the nation.
Frum: If there are air strikes on the Latin American or South American or Mexican mainland, innocent people are certain to be killed because air strikes are so imprecise, even the best. Trump, from the beginning of his administration, began flying drones over Mexican territory without notifying the Mexicans. This was reported by CNN. The Mexicans found out from American news media. And then, because of the enormous pressure on the Mexican government, they hastily gave permission for something that they didn’t know about.
But the drones they are flying are Predators, which can be armed and may be armed. Now, so far, there have been no strikes, and so far, the reports are that the drones remain, to date, not armed. But that may or may not be true, that may or may not be up to date. And sooner or later, there may be a Predator drone strike inside Mexico. There may be a bomber strike inside Colombia, maybe one inside Venezuela. At that point, we’re into a bigger conflict. Well, is there anything inside the military that says, I need to see some paper here, sir, from Congress, from somebody?
Nichols: —the thing is, if you strike an unmarked boat in international waters, you can sort of slip under the kind of, like, Well—you can hand-wave away a lot of stuff—it’s piracy. They were bad guys. We thought they were gonna shoot at us. You can make up a lot of stuff.
If you attack a sovereign nation and its territory, it’s an act of war. Attacking Venezuela or Mexico, there is absolutely nothing, no legal cover for that. And I don’t know how Americans would respond to a president who said, I’m gonna keep us out of war, and I don’t know how the military is gonna respond to a president who said, I’m gonna keep us out of war, and now I’m ordering you into combat as a war of discretion to take out people who are not—
But I think, going back to the domestic environment, the election will come up next year, and Donald Trump’s gonna say, How can you dare criticize me or anybody else when this country’s at war and our brave boys are overseas fighting the drug lords like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steven Seagal hitting the beaches in Commando?
Frum: I wrote a dystopian novel a long time ago in which the background of the novel is this long-running war inside Mexico that no one can quite remember how the United States stumbled into, but it can’t find any way to get out of. And as Americans have discovered, these kinds of conflicts are easy to start, hard to end. It’s hard to define an end state.
Nichols: I was talking with friends who have to teach this stuff at both military and civilian institutions, and it’s like, how do you teach the American national security process now? There isn’t one. It’s whatever Donald Trump—it’s all vibes, right? It’s whatever Donald Trump feels at any given moment. And the problem is that he has—it’s a problem for us; it’s an advantage to him—that he surrounded himself with people who say, I am anticipating that he wants to do this. I will always have a plan ready to say, “You bet, boss. I got a plan for striking Venezuela.”
And I don’t think they’ve thought it through. I don’t think they care about thinking it through, David. I think they wanna be able to say, America’s at war. Anybody who opposes the president is a traitor.
Frum: Last question before I let you go, with gratitude for your time: Greenland. The United States must have a plan for invading Greenland. American troops are deployed to Greenland in March of 1941, before the United States entered the Second World War, to secure Greenland against use as a German U-boat base. They operated with the approval of the local Greenland authorities. Denmark was then under Nazi occupation, so the Danish government was surely not displeased. And during the Cold War, there were always war games about, Well, what if the Soviets made a move on northern Greenland? So there must be these plans now. What happens if you tell an American officer, I wanna carry out a military attack on the territory of a NATO ally? Do they raise an eyebrow, or do they just do it?
Nichols: (Exhales.) I think you’ve finally gotten to a scenario that is so crystal clear—and maybe years of teaching military officers has made me too optimistic—I have to think that there are, even at lower levels, there are gonna be officers who are gonna say, I’m not doing that. I’m not killing—
Frum: Because they understand a treaty is a law in the United States.
Nichols: I want to believe that an attack on a NATO ally would spark an internal revolt within the United States and the U.S. military. I want to believe that. Will it happen? It depends on how many people are watching TV at any given moment, I guess.
Frum: I’ll leave you with this thought. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent recently gave an interview, I think, on one of the financial channels where he talked about the American strategy on dealing with China, and he said, We’re going to mobilize our allies to work with us. Mobilize our what? Our what?
Nichols: Well, we’re getting to the point, I hate to say, that—I used to take pride—so much of this has been humbling for an Atlanticist and an American exceptionalist like you, like me. It’s humbling to say, I used to take pride in the fact that the Russians had no friends in the world and the Americans had plenty, right? Part of the reason Russia was always, even after the Soviet Union, Russia was always in the mess it was in: because they don’t have friends; they have clients. It’s all very transactional.
We’re becoming that. We’re becoming this kind of friendless, powerful state that just has clients.
But right now, the president—and this is a problem for civil-military relations—the president is saying, We don’t really have any friends. You have me. I’m the commander. And if I tell you to attack somebody to whom we are bound by history and treaty, you’re gonna do it anyway.
Remember when he was asked about torture in the first election, and he said, Well, if I tell the generals to do it, they’ll do it. Well, the military pushed back and said, We won’t do that. And I think, to this day, he didn’t like that answer.
Beyond Politicized Stupidity
Trump is the threat within.
He has surrounded himself with people whose sole loyalty is to Donald Trump, not the rule of law, not the Constitution. Then Trump blames “activist courts” when he is an activist president when it comes to flouting the Constitution.
The only question pertains to the appropriate degree of worry over the threat within.
But rather than discuss the article, I fully expect many to attempt to deflect the issues by asking “Would you rather have Kamala Harris or Joe Biden?”
Trump is a manipulative master at placing blame elsewhere. Close to half the nation will not see the obvious threat within due to “us vs them” politicized stupidity.
And some will accuse The Atlantic and me of TDS. Those who do have Trump Worship Syndrome TWS.
Unfortunately, this setup goes far beyond politicized stupidity. This is the “Project for a New American Century” PNAC on steroids, by true believers , many who know exactly what they are doing.
- Think Tank: PNAC was a think tank supported by various members of the Bush Administration including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz. PNAC called for a global pre-eminence of the US military, which is reflected in the sheer amount of US bases in the world.
- Iraq War: PNAC was a leading voice in advocating for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, sending letters to President Bill Clinton in 1998 and President George W. Bush in 2001 that argued for military action against Iraq.
- “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”: The group released a report in 2000, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” that outlined its vision for American dominance and called for a massive increase in defense spending and fighting multiple wars.
PNAC is what got us involved in Iraq and Afghanistan for decades at a cost of many trillions of dollars.
In contrast to PNAC which was about foreign policy, the new threat is about foreign and domestic policy.
Many of the true believers understand what’s going on. They privately cheer this takeover while publicly denying that’s it’s happening.
Some are willing to put up with domestic wrongs just to get the military buildup they want.
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If you don’t see any legitimate threats, then you are blinded by Trump Worship Syndrome.
I will be tied up most of the day unable to approve comments
Hope your health is continuing to improve.
Whoever downvotes the above comment needs to go outside and touch grass for a while.
The first test of an illegal order is “do you agree with it?” If you agree with it, it’s not illegal, at least not right then.
us department of war and her CIA HAVE BEEN COMMITTING WAR CRIMES FOR OVER A CENTURY. NONSTOP SINCE 1898
Considering the CIA was only founded in 1947 I fail to see their involvement in anything from 1898.
As for war crimes they started in the US from its founding with the forced displacement of civilians who refused to bend the knee to the traitors like Washington and the other rebels, maybe add the Trail of Tears, Sherman’s March to the sea, Wounded Knee in 1890.
So war crimes are a given for the US military and the generals so obey unlawful commands all the time and often with dubious legal rulings like water boarding not being torture but enhanced interrogation.
And now let’s hear from the non-TDS distorted / real reality & take stock in the always sound & perfectly worded thoughts of Victor Davis Hanson, who lays out the irrefutable case that Trump is winning big time.
Victor Davis Hanson: How Trump Forced China’s Hand
My, gawd, out of all the people you could have chosen to build a paper tiger you chose David Frum. Thank goodness Paul Krugman didn’t pen a similar garbage article.
The mainstream Dems are getting crushed from all sides. You’ve got Trump pulverizing them; Shutdown Schumer is making them look like a tool; now they’ve got to worry about the Mamdani’s, AOC’s, Crocket’s & Omar’s taking over the party.
Lol. And the elections just happened tonight and dems swept them all including Mamdani in NY. Who isn’t living in reality?
Just waiting on Prop 50……
Largest turn out since 1969.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/live-blog/election-day-2025-nyc-mayor-governor-race-live-updates-rcna241592#rcrd92580
The New York City Board of Elections announced tonight that 2 million people have cast ballots.
The last time that happened in a mayoral race was in 1969, according to the post. About 1.15 million voters cast ballots in the 2021 mayoral race. The highest turnout this century was in 2021, when 1.5 million New Yorkers cast ballots.
Before that, about 1.9 million people voted in the 1989 election. In 1969, nearly 2.5 million people voted in the mayoral election.
“Imagine yourself—I don’t know that such a thing could ever happen—but imagine yourself a malign and criminally intended president who wanted to remake the U.S. military as a tool of personal power.”
Then, why the hell mention it? You’re immediately saying Trump is malevolent & criminal minded. What a flying pile of BS!! Full stop. Yes, Mish, it’s pointless to read further.
As for the ballroom, I can think of at least 10 good reasons for not going full on review, and it’s hilarious that Frum doesn’t even mention a single one of the obvious reasons not to go full Monty.
As for the crypto angle, I generally agree with the points here except myopic logic surrounding pardoning. While I don’t think it was right, Frum is being ENORMOUSLY hypocritical when you compare this to Biden & Hunter, much less the brewing autopen scandal for those1600 that Biden pardoned, including convicted murderers plus commuting the sentences of all federal death row inmates.
As for going to war with the cartels, I guess Frum is okay with the 100K+ drug related deaths. Let’s just let that body county keep piling up endlessly and possibly even accelerate. What an opportunistic scum bag. The cartels have killed thousands of times more than 9/11. There’s not unconstitutional about Trump taking on the cartels with the US military. Not one dam thing. They are criminal, terrorist organizations plain & simple, representing a grave threat to US national security.
Yes, Mish, you lost me. This might be your worst post ever, taking the side of a piece of garbage like Frum. Remember, there’s a reason you don’t read The Atlantic.
“As for going to war with the cartels, I guess Frum is okay with the 100K+ drug related deaths”
This is an absolutely perfect example of the “politicized stupidity” that Mish is talking about!
Frum & others like him that think the US should stand here forever with our feet in the quicksand are part of the status quo. We don’t solve big problems with status quo. Using the US military against cartels makes 100% sense. To think otherwise is a perfect example of political stupidity.
But Frum & 90% of those trolling here on Mishtalk apparently are okay with lots of dead people from cartel drugs.
Excellent essay, and I’m afraid it describes the situation to a T. It also spawns question that go beyond Trump. What does it say about the legitimacy of electoral consent? I’ve been re-reading Herbert Spencer’s grumblings and finding no comfort. We live at the mercy of an all-powerful state, and we’re at risk regardless of which deranged ass is in command.
Frum is utterly hypocritical with regard to “politicized stupidity”, he’s practically a walking case study… example after example in this text of politicized-stupid misinterpretations of recent events. And after obliviously misinterpreting the actions of the other side, the man cannot see the equally egregious failures by his preferred side.
There need to be greater checks on executive power, regardless of who sits in the White House. Biden, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan all gave in to the same temptations. There aren’t any kings, but there are no angels or genuine heroes, either. Power corrupts, and the more you have the more it corrupts you.
That being said, no, the current President is not going to overthrow the military. Nor is he going to make himself Dictator-for-Life (like Xi in China). There are plenty of rotten apples in high places, but there are still enough genuine Americans, plus enough of an actual balance-of-power, to hold the line.
I can only echo on this missive what another commenter said below regarding it is an excellent post.
I’ll only add per the oath of those in the armed forces and enlisted personnel they swear to protect and defend the Constitution and obey orders from their superiors’ orders.
Commissioned officers swear an oath to the Constitution.
The only possible conclusion then is that they are all guilty of perjury.
Thank you for posting this.
So much food for thought.
The divisiveamericandisestablishconstitutionalists (I’m anti to that) were spawned by a billionaire-propelled ‘fair and balanced’ news outfit and its wonderful political newsspinners. All of the politicized stupidity and current upside down illegal activity owes all vim and vigor to that ‘most trusted” news agency.
Interestingly, presidential DJT text equity stock appears to offer another ‘Hinderburg omen’ – somewhat tracking the general public approval of presidential performance – down more 75% from its pre-election 31 Oct 2024 high and only 12% above its 3 Sept 2024 nadir …
Maybe midterm susceptible republicans should consider hitching their wagons to a different administrative mule team?
“Remember when he was asked about torture in the first election, and he said, Well, if I tell the generals to do it, they’ll do it. Well, the military pushed back and said, We won’t do that. And I think, to this day, he didn’t like that answer.”
I remember when waterboarding was declared not to be torture. Obviously, it is a method of torture. Torture occurred at Abu Graib prison in Iraq, by U.S. soldiers, as General Taguba discovered, upon investigation. Some of the Abu Graib photos are still hidden from the public.
One of your best posts Mish. It high lights how important nuance is in everything…because there’s always going to be differences of opinion, but the most important thing is to strive to guarantee the freedom and problem resolving effects…within those opinions/barriers. And authoritarianism ignores that goal and process because it monopolizes power, while democracy although messy insists that you consider/look at/seek to resolve opposites instead of being a mere apparachik.
Monopolies are ALWAYS problematic. I’m assuming you are against monopolies Mish. Monopolies create problems. Breaking up monopolies enables solutions…if you discover the key outness created by that monopoly and then apply its solution. Creating all new money ONLY AS DEBT…IS A MONOPOLY CONCEPT/PARADIGM. And breaking that up with strategically applied Monetary Gifting like with a 50% discout/rebate policy at retail sale etc. enables the things that both political parties want to see like the simultaneous resolution of inflation (both parties and everyone) and benefical deflation (Republicans/libertarians), increased purchasing power (everyone) reduced taxes (everyone especially libertarians and republicans), and last but not least a feeling of relief and gratitude for a gift of price/purchasing power that has no moral hazard and effects everyone because everyone participates in retail sale. So whats not to like about ending the authoritarian monopoly monetary paradigm of Debt Only with Strategic Monetary Gifting?
“Biden used an autopen; isn’t that the same? No, it’s not? Well, I refuse to understand why it’s not.” …Uh, Yeah, its the same…Uh, wait a min, its NOT. Why? cause in the case of the Trumpster its completely transparent; in the case of Biden, we have no idea who’s really behind the autopen.
“And no one has ever said, I’m imposing tariffs on one of America’s closest allies, Canada, because I’m upset that they made a TV ad that implied that Ronald Reagan was a better president than I am.” wow, this is a doozy. A country, via a clandestine but public ad inserts an AI generated slick presentation literally insulting the sitting president of that ‘other’ country; and expects no outcry, no PERSONAL response from said sitting president? and guess what?..only one person in the entire country apparently retaliates, and publicly.
What the hell has gone wrong w/this country?? and I could entertain every point made by this guy in this article.
Here’s a question for all the bright financial folks around here:
Why is 1973 a ‘peak’ year and a turning point year in the USA history????
Merv, when Trump said he has no idea who CZ is, was he lying or was it because the autopen gave CZ the pardon? It is one or the other, let’s allow you to pick which one it is.
What’s your rationalization for how Trump could pardon someone and not even know who he is?
I have no doubt Trump signs everything placed in front of him. Not because he has knowledge about what he is signing but only because he loves his signature so much. It must give him a feeling of great power and generally greatness to know others must do what ever the hell it was he just signed. So no auto pen for him, he gets his rocks off signing.
Trump must go if America is to survive.
86/47
Lying…and, not lying. He didn’t know CZ from Adam, his son told him to pardon CZ. No autopen involved. Never, ever expect the autopen from the Trumper.
this is a perfect example. Reagan was against tariffs. imposing tariffs because the ad edited the order in which he said things is stupid primarily because it’s a tax on US consumers.
and Trump just pardoned Changpeng Zhao after he made Trump lots of money. when asked he said he has no idea who that is. So much for Biden’s autopen.
Those seeking sanity in our federal leadership are emerging from the vast darkness of the last administration such that our eyes have yet to adjust to the light of the current administration.
Are you implying or stating outright that you can’t see the mental illness in Trump? You can’t see MAGA as a cult? If this is your TWS just please help save America and off yourself.
Not sure why I am responding to someone who thinks people that disagree with you should “off themselves” but what I am referring to is analogous to a driver emerging from a dark tunnel only to come out of the tunnel with impaired vision due the brightness therein not fully being able to see the faults in the road. Overall, I feel Trump is leading our country in the right direction despite his many errors and flaws. Certainly, better than any alternatives we were given in 2024. BTW, what is TWS?
Bravo for publishing this, so that it will (perhaps) be read by people who would never read The Atlantic.
So many people are unable to understand that the enemy of your enemy is quite likely _not_your friend. Up to a point, they may be a useful ally. But only up to a point.
There was certainly much to criticize in the Biden administration — and in the administration that we would probably have had if Harris had been elected.
But I am reminded of what Chiang Kai Shek said of his opponents in WWII, that the Japanese invaders were a disease of the skin, but the Chinese Communists were a disease of the heart. (Do I need to point out here that neither Biden nor Harris is even remotely a communist?)
Trump and his lackeys are a disease of the heart.
What kind of intellectually self-depriving human would refuse to read things they don’t agree with? Intellectual practice starts with challenging your existing beliefs. That’s why I started reading Mish’s blog, and why I have been reading Zerohedge since 2009 despite finding them to be a bunch of conspiratorial racist nutbags.
Anyone who shelters in their filter bubble is selling their life experience well short of its potential.
A huge proportion of Americans read little whatsoever. That’s why Fox news and social media have been so incredibly damaging to national politics.
To answer the question, first you must decide what orders would be illegal and how a military commander could make that decision?
And for the rest of the polemic, where were these people when fisa warrants were falsified, don and fbi and irs were all weaponized against political opponents? What did General Flynn do that justified what happened to him?
None of these organizations were weaponized. They investigated legitimate crimes. You are just okay with the criminals.
Trump is malignant narcissist, a misogynist, a civilly liable rapist and convicted felon of tax evasion in NY state.
There is still no excuse for what Obama, WH, the FBI, HRC campaign afterwards did to him regarding Russiagate.
I can still hear Michelle Obama saying at the 2016 Democratic Convention, when they go low, we go high.”
Did she know what her husband did? I don’t know for sure. But I do think as a married man that I tell my wife almost everything and confide in her and seek her advice on all important matters regarding our household, our marriage, my well being, and before retirement she knew about what was going on in my workplace.
You have that totally backwards. Russiagate, for instance, was a FISA investigation of nothing at all, spun up by manipulating the media. Flynn was hung out to dry over nothing.
The J6 protest was a protest, not an “insurrection”.
The list of abuses goes on and on. By both sides, not just one.
Until you can see that the problem is unchecked power “in any hands”, you’re going to be missing the solution.
Yoda “The delusions run strong in this one”…
Jan 6 was an insurrection.
>
All you have is whataboutism, and the implied claim that your references actions are the same or as egregious as Trump’s. So you probably believe the judiciary is in the bag for team blue, because Trump has not won 100% of all his cases.
Agreed: “Trump is the threat within.”…
…that we would do better…
without.
A President that does not respect the Constitution after pledging to do so should be removed. Impeachment is the only answer. Third time is a charm.
The people who continue to defend Trump’s obvious violations of the Constitution are his aiders and abettors
86/47 Impeach, 25th or god whatever works.
So few understand that Trump is setting precedents that will lead to nothing but tears and sorrow over time. Our Constitutional Republic is pretty much done for, just in time for the 250-year anniversary. The Citizen’s United ruling, insane Liberal policy, and now Trump will have overridden the Founding Father’s goal of creating a national government that would serve the people while inhibiting sociopathic politicians from taking control.
“This place is dead anyway”
-Swingers
Could you please list some or all of the “Insane liberal policies” that you are referring to?
What happens to those on the right when we elect a crazy Dem POTUS that uses Trump illegal tactics but is immune to prosecution?
Why do any of you think you have the right to discuss what is wrong and what is right? What makes any of you better than Biden or Trump?
Our very MONEY is a CRIME according to OUR Constitution which states that DEBT is forbidden to be used as money. We are ALL criminals and/or accessories to crime and you think an economy and a country based on CRIME is SOUND?
You are insane if you think criminals have the right to determine the rules.
Where in the Constitution exactly does it say that the feds can’t use debt for money?
Article 1, Section 10
There isn’t anything INHERENTLY wrong with the concept of debt. But everything is wrong/problematic with our current MONOPOLY monetary paradigm for the creation and distribution of ALL new money which is the APPLIED concept known as Debt ONLY.
What a wacky take
“It’s the demand that brings forth the supply. It’s a domestic problem.“
It is indeed a domestic problem, but the demand is not a result of an arm’s length transaction, because it’s a result of severe addiction.
When the addiction is less severe (example: cigarettes), simple domestic prohibitions have a result in reducing the demand. It’s not the same with hard drugs. Therefore this is a very bad use of the supply-demand rule.
That’s also why the complete decriminalization of drugs in Portland did not work. It just resulted in more drugs.
Libertarians have a problem understanding “severe physical addiction”.
Opiates are the drugs that create severe physical addictions. The US has been fighting to keep opiates off the streets since the 19th century. It has resoundingly failed. In Portugal, they decriminalized opiates, teach all children the horrors of addiction, and fund drug rehab centers. It has worked spectacularly. Of course Americans are too stupid and evil to try something that doesn’t involve killing foreigners.
POTUS learned a lot from his first term loyalty over a disloyal veteran political party lackey. A veteran of “law fare” with a pretty solid record despite many critics. He usually cites his authority aware of his many critics. Generals & Admirals are political and have a staff and military lawyer resources. There is a lot more gray in the world than black & white. Query the military lawyer resource and have him write a supporting legal argument for or against. Military has UCMJ which presumes guilt to shotgun any high rank traitors.
No rioting over the weekend or it wasn’t covered by MSM. SNAP is 50% funded for November following the guidance of the judge. December could be interesting if the government is still shut down & SNAP isn’t funded. Always easy to declare an emergency when there is rioting in the streets.
I agree with your overall take, Mish. I would object to Frum’s implied premise that the DOJ had previously been staffed with honorable people.
That’s fair, but certainly less dishonorable than the new guys.
Our republic is not starting to crumble. It is quite a distance down that road. It was a degenerative process that both parties progressively nibbled at. This was a risk of a two-party system, finally chipping away enough at turns to come to this. It just took an unnaturally nervy guy with no sense of shame to openly tip it, to this state. Now it is huge bites being taken week to week out of core institutions. It is like a diseased tree with a gradually weakened structure, now being eaten up. We will live in “interesting times.”
The Republic was always imperfect. It dissolved into Civil War once already. It always required an informed citizenry willing to compromise for the greater good. That is what we have lost. The citizenry has become corrupt and selfish, so the Republican must perish with it.
why not? lets invade Mexico!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-drug-cartels-mexico-plans-military-b2857527.html
I thought “we” wanted a beautiful wall, and separation. This is hardly that. Why would a resort manager attack and annex the slum next door? You break it, you own it. This was already decided as a thing not to do in the 1840’s.
I think that is why they put the physical fitness issue to the generals while at the big meeting. None of those guys are in that good of shape. Easy way to get rid of them
For decades, many 4-star Generals have been creating entire departments around them, with hundreds of employees, mostly conducting studies that have nothing to do with their roles. Just “funds allocated for general research“. They have become part of the problem.
And libertarians nowadays have a problem with Trump cutting down as much as he can from the bureaucratic machine. They are right in that they would like something more decisive and legally perfect, but the bureaucracy has already shielded itself from such attacks. The rest of their TDS is just plain Stockholm Syndrome.
Wow, that was a great post Mish.
I see endless legitimate threats. Trump’s communism / central planning is #1 followed by democrat’s socialism / central planning as #2. We are now truly at two sides of the same central planning coin.
Central planning always fails and this time will be no different. The generals can do whatever they want it won’t make a difference to what’s coming either way.
Got exit strategy?
You’re off base, #1 threat is oligarchs pulling the strings
How do we know what Generals and Admirals will do? Easy. They all know, and have for a very long time, that the greatest threat to this country is defense spending. Have you ever heard one of them say it?
If you ask 2 lawyers the same question you will get two responses… I suspect there is a lot of secret warrants in the background since the cartels are now classified as foreign terrorist organizations. With regard to the lawyers, if you are staffed with a bunch of democrat appointed lawyers, their opinions will be skewed by their political leanings as well. My lawyer father used to say “there is a reason doctors and lawyers practice their professions, because no matter how much they practice, they never get perfect.”
I heard once when I was young from someone bright that ‘military goods are inflationary – they are goods which are produced but are not sold’. I never bought that they are inflationary per se but it’s always stuck with me “ they are goods which are produced but are not sold”. Therefore, pretty much, or entirely, non-productive. E.g. a missle.
IMHO people mistankely believe it’s somehow a ‘softie’ if you woudl rather take that money and actually do something productive with it in society – say use for some productive job training or such. It’s NOT softie, it’s just prudent rational thinking abut how we spend billions of dollars. And the military never gets told “no, we’re not buying that”. We do that to our own detriment.
A box truck brings several times its value to the economy by bringing goods from producers to sellers and consumers. A military truck takes more resources to build and then stays parked for years or blown up across the world.
The other factor is Trump is on the downhill side of living
There are clear medical signs of “the end is near”
His ability to restrain his worst impulses is lower and lower
His need to make a “mark on history” is increasing
He’s surrounded himself with people who won’t say “no”
It’s gonna lead to bad places
The only good thing is he’s not capable of promoting a likely successor
Psalm 108(109)
UN Charter states: clear self-defense against an imminent threat. Has the US made drugs and drug smuggling into the U.S. an Imminent threat? I believe they have…
An imminent threat of what exactly?
100K plus deaths per year. That’s 30X 9/11.
Really so what? Why not spend the money trying to understand what causes these people to get addicted in the first place, both mentally and physically, and work on that? Crystal Meth is produced in vast quantities right here in the USA. So is fentanyl. Why no war here at home? How successful have our interdiction campaigns been over the last 50 years? Why keep performing the same failures over and over?
I am not going to get into the main point of the article, with which I agree with Mish. However I will say that almost nothing that Trump is doing will help arrest the long term decline of the United States and most of his “policies” will hasten the decline. Almost everyone (in the USA and in other countries) is still acting on institutional memory and as soon as it becomes unavoidably obvious (most likely with some type of physical shortage or physical loss through disaster or war) that the United States does not have the capabilities that everyone thinks it has, the situation (financial, social, institutional, geopolitical) will change in what feels like an instant. We have already burnt the furniture to keep warm and now we are living off of what little reputation that we have left.
I am preparing while physical goods are plentiful and (relatively) cheap.
The Hindenburg POTUS.
I mentioned to my wife that the “Hindenburg omen” was sighted recently. My wife thought of Trump.
One of the interesting things about Hitler that most people don’t know is that he never created a system meant to last beyond his death. Germany was meant for destruction upon his death, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
So who coined the expression “the 1000 year Reich” related to Nazi Germany?
And what was the system put in place to replace him? There wasn’t one.
It was propaganda, not a plan. Important distinction to make these days.
Jon, sorry but that sounds like the kind of non-falsifiable vilification Oceania regularly does to convince their serfs that certain efforts were or are justified to remove foreign leaders, who are, more often than not, agents Oceania oligarchs put into power in the first place.
Try reading Ron Unz’s summaries of all the reading he’s done to understand ww2 and other history.
I studied the history of Germany extensively in college and thereafter. From Bismarck through the post WWII reconstruction and adoption of its modern constitution.
According to which authors? Did they have relationships with TLA’s? Or rely on material from authors with those relationships?
“fake news” is as old as life itself and it’s written into history books by the winners.
…
Unless you claim Hitler was a double agent or at least just another strongman installed by the capitalist west to fight the communist east (a claim I believe), I’m not buying the claim he designed everything to die with him.
If you do claim it, I’m still not sure, as oligarch puppets sometimes find a way to free themselves (for a while) and do things their backers dislike. Though it would at least make more sense.
Even then, it takes a huge amount of detailed truthful reporting to conclude as much. IMO this is probably “unknowable”.
I say “probably” because perhaps your college sources were 100% uncompromised, relied on 100% factual info, and brought no biases with them before making such a startling claim. 😉
FWIW, I did not downvote. You seem earnest, you’re polite (something I fail at too often), and say interesting things.
Even if I doubt some of the information told to you and that you earnestly repeat, I’ve repeated so much nonsense in my life I can never atone for it…so, carry on… 🙂
Well Mish, you out did yourself with this post. I think it is spot on. As for the blame Biden/Harris comment, I would suggest we had two really bad choices.
When the voter turnout was measly some 40%, “none” got 60% of the votes, or about three times than the front running candidates. Were the US a democratic country, the elections would be deemed invalid.
The uniparty media tells people they have two choices. People do have more than 2 choices though.
I wonder whether the “I only had two choices of lying murdering thieves, so I had to choose one of them” falls into the category of “learned helplessness”.
Surprised your just picking up on this now Mish. Donald Trump is a true psychopath and those closest to him have been warning people about him for decades. He has an absolute personal need to be the center of attention at all times, which is why he comes up with crazy stuff daily. He had to start his own social network so he could spew his nuttiness daily without interruption or others criticizing his utterances. He has an absolute need for 100% control over everyone and everything. His entire goal in life is to be seen as the greatest and most powerful man in the world. He has a psychological need for it. He can destroy whatever he wants and he will, just to show how important he is. And most importantly, he is just an ignorant, stupid person, as is attested to by hundreds of folks who have gotten close to him. He is a traitor to the nation and the Founding Fathers. As is all those around him. They should all be hung for treason. When he tries to get appointed leader for life, and he must in his own mind, I will rise up in armed resistance. And I expect to be killed by some trailer park evangelical killing RINOs for Jesus and the Father (Trump).
Jon, I appreciate the sentiment. But seriously, in your hypothetical scenario, there’d be no point sacrificing yourself trying to accomplish with violence what you, we, have been unable to accomplish with dialogue and voting.
Save yourself and any fellow travellers/contributers. Retreat to somewhere. Find an exit strategy, like MPO says.
I would say that he’s a narcissist, but not a psychopath.
Great article. The more he does things with a dubious basis, the more his calculus changes about having a free election in 2028 (and so avoid any future legal issues).
So the specific things such as blowing up boats, sending national guard etc. are a distraction from the real problems which are politicisation of the DoJ and FCC (and by extension the media).
ChatGPT gave me an interesting analogy which is in the past you had a political pendulum (which would naturally swing between sides) but now it is more like a ratchet. One key mechansism of the ratchet is the impact of social media’s penchant for emotion stoking which the right is far more effective at. In other words even if X is apolitical it will have a natural tendency to amplify right wing views. Or for balance it won’t amplify wet statements from the left.
USA – boiling frog….please jump out of the pan!.
I had a commentator here play the same stupid game with me about the ballroom. “Why do you care, someone else is paying for it!”
Trumpism is a DEI program for clowns and morons.
On a related note, I often find the Atlantic to make for tedious reading, but I enjoyed another piece of theirs recently, “here’s how the AI crash happens.” A lot of interesting details in that story.
spot on.
“so you don’t believe in border or deportation”– no, I do, I just don’t think raids should be done by masked agents, people shouldn’t be deported to torture prisons, raids shouldn’t be so wide that they ensnare US citizens who then spend days in jail, and we shouldn’t harass and detain tourists, and we shouldn’t deport a scientist with a PhD whose been here for 38 years for a weed possession arrest 9 years ago back to South Korea. Also, do we really need waist and ankle chains? When we deport 300 south koreans at a high tech plant Trump touted, do we realy need to put the workers in chains?
The broader issue is that Republican agenda is no longer a set of core ideas or beliefs. To be a Republican today means agreeing with whatever it is Trump just said or posted online, even if it runs contrary to ideas you supposedly held for decades– and this is where the political stupidity comes in because you then have to use stupidity to contort whatever idiotic thing Trump just did with what you’ve supposedly believed all along. So yeah, blowing up boats, talking of regime change, all the neocon stuff modern Republicans are supposed to be against comes out as–“oh you think we should allow drugs to kill Americans?”.
Foundational conservative principles like state’s rights, being wary of federal power etc… is jettisoned and now it’s good for federal troops to be in cities because Trump says so.
It’s so easy to end illegal immigration by fining employers and offering bounties for tips — perhaps collectible even by the illegals themselves. Without a wage, people really would self-deport.
Unfortunately, the costly stormtrooper performance art does appeal to many.
Choose any Native American at random, across the US, and ask them if Uncle Sam keeps promises or treaties. You raise good points but it just looks futile. Bernie is spot on correct when he says that the US is run by legalized bribery – and you can never change that because powerful Israel supporters – just for starters – would never allow it.
What constitutes illegal bribery in most countries is called lobbying in the US.
Amen.