No. of Recommendations: 6
He called out his own private army to Capitol Hill. Invited them to come, whipped them into a frenzy, sent them to the Hill. Then he pardoned them all. Every last one of them. He protected them from the consequences of their illegal actions so that he could do it again. And, of course he's getting others to do his bidding while staying at a respectable distance from the action. His private "army" is only one small step removed from his formal command of the military.
But that's not true. It's not a small step. It's a huge step. It's a massive chasm.
This is what I'm talking about. Trump is perfectly happy to give an incendiary speech to a crowd that he has virtually no formal relationship to. As a very general matter, he's not responsible for them. You can't get charged for holding a political rally, or giving a political speech, even if it's a pretty incendiary speech.
That's the safe way to do it, because there's no risk to you. You're not using an organization you're in charge of. It's not "his own private army" except in a very metaphorical way - nearly everyone there was an inchoate group of random people with no formal relationship at all with the President. He had the plausible deniability that he was only giving a speech, that he didn't give them any orders and they were under no obligation to listen to him. It was a rally that got out of hand.
Formal command of the military, though, means that won't fly. An angry mob of people the President has zero formal relationship to storms the Capitol, you can argue in court that's not your doing. The U.S. military takes over the Capitol? That's all on you, man. Either you destroy the government or you're facing a firing squad. And Trump is not that guy. That's the key difference - while Trump could have taken over Congress if he had used the military, the bunch of idiots that stormed the Capitol was never going to accomplish anything. Because they weren't an actual army. It was horrible because they might have ended up hurting an awful lot of people, but a bunch of incited rally-goers isn't capable of actually staging a coup or taking over the government.
All he has to do is whip up his private "army" of pardoned J6'ers to go after those 4 folks and get them out of the way after the Nov 2028 election. If (a big IF) he can get a GOP majority in the House in 2028, he can get a lacky like Mike Johnson to agree that he should be the President rather than follow the line of succession as spelled out in that amendment I'm too lazy to look up.(14th??)
Would never work. Almost all of that private "army" of pardoned J6'ers aren't in any organized group that can be "called out" to go after anyone. These are almost entirely just ordinary people that live in various places across the country. They have no ability to organize and successfully stage an assassination of four individuals that will be among the most highly protected on the planet. I mean, luck exists - but you can't stage a coup that way. You have to be willing to use your actual military (or the Secret Service) and get your own hands dirty. Again, that's not Trump.
I think everyone should stop pretending that this whiny coward, whose most daring move is to just complain as much as possible and hope someone else solves his problems for him, has any of what it takes to be a real strongman. He just doesn't. That's why all the real dictators of the world take his temperature and find him laughable. To quote Logan Roy, he is just not a serious person. Everything he does, in every context, reveals him to be a pathetic fearful narcissistic bully. That sort of person can be terribly damaging, but is not the next Joseph Stalin.
The question is not whether Trump is capable of doing some surprising things, it's what will we do to counter things that are plausible but not probable.
Sure - but none of these "Trump becomes dictator" scenarios are even plausible. They're just not. He's not the sort of person who would ever do the things that need to be done to be that guy. He's not daring enough, he doesn't have the strength or will - or even the attention span - to do this sort of thing.
