More frightening than Nixon's final days: Trump's firing Pentagon civilians, pardoning war criminals

[marmar]

More frightening than Nixon's final days: Trump's firing Pentagon civilians, pardoning war criminals
Donald Trump is unraveling: The president's public breakdown can quickly turn dangerous

By HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
DECEMBER 23, 2020 2:27PM


(Salon) One of the more haunting images from "The Final Days," the sequel to Woodward and Bernstein's "All the President's Men," is that of Richard Nixon wandering drunkenly through the White House giving speeches to the portraits of the previous presidents as Watergate was unraveling and he realized he was about to endure the worst humiliation of his life. In a meeting with some congressman, at one point, he said, "I can go in my office and pick up a telephone and in 25 minutes millions of people will be dead," prompting California Senator Alan Cranston to warn Defense Secretary James Schlesinger about "the need for keeping a berserk president from plunging us into a holocaust."

Schlesinger went on to issue an order that if the president gave any nuclear launch order, military commanders should check with either him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger before executing them, which is a serious departure from the normal protocol requiring an order from the Commander in Chief to launch immediately. Luckily, Nixon just moped around the White House for a while until he was finally given the heave-ho by members of Congress.

Looking back on it, what we thought of as a frightening, dangerous episode now looks like a staid and dignified affair compared to what's going on in Donald Trump's final days. We can only wish that Trump was just crying into a glass of scotch and asking Henry Kissinger to get down on his knees and pray for him as Nixon did. Instead, he seems to be having a very public nervous breakdown. Since the election, he's fired the civilian leadership at the Pentagon and replaced them with henchmen and sycophants, apparently setting of serious concern among the top brass.

....(snip).....

We know from various reports that Trump has been meeting with his former National Security Adviser, the recently pardoned, admitted felon Mike Flynn, and his lawyer Sidney Powell, who was formerly Trump's lawyer as well. Powell wanted to be named a "special counsel" to investigate election fraud, but according to the Daily Beast, that has been nixed by the president for now. The president's lawyer Rudy Giuliani is hostile to Powell and has told the press that she is not affiliated with the president's legal team, but he too is pushing ridiculous schemes such as having the Department of Homeland Security seize the voting machines in certain states, which the DHS has said they have no authority to do. Flynn has also publicly proposed Trump invoke Martial Law in the states that Biden won narrowly and order the military to run a new election. That Trump has been open to discussing such far-fetched plans is bad enough in itself. And for some bizarre reason, former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who also happens to have had a long term affair with convicted and deported Russian Spy Maria Butina, has been present at at least one meeting with all of these people, as slightly less unhinged members of the White House attempted to push back on their wacky plots. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/12/23/trumps-final-days-more-frightening-than-nixons-firing-pentagon-civilians-pardoning-war-criminals/

[empedocles]

1. Might wake up SCOTUS?

[keithbvadu2]

2. Orders from Boss Putin to Subordinate Trump:::

Orders from Boss Putin to Subordinate Trump:::

Disrupt experience, continuity, professionalism, leadership, and competence in the DOD by replacing them with your loyal political commissars.
Install your own GOP Deep State.

Create negative world relations by pardoning convicted war criminals.

[nwliberalkiwi]

3. Submarine

A US submarine just transited the Straight of Hormuz with 150 cruise missiles aboard.

[Skeptical Thomas]

4. Also From Salon: Trump's Evil Endgame

By Chauncey Devega, DECEMBER 24, 2020 12:00PM (UTC)

Donald Trump's villainy does not rest or find any respite during the holiday season.

As Michael D'Antonio, author of "The Truth About Trump," told Salon in a recent phone conversation, Trump will accept any help — legal or illegal, foreign or domestic, from friend or foe — in his effort to remain in power. Donald Trump is America's fascist authoritarian stalker. He will not stop.

During a video released on Tuesday evening, Donald Trump again suggested that he will not leave office as required on Inauguration Day. In that same speech, Trump also offered the American people payments of $2,000 each (instead of the paltry $600 dollars yielded by Republicans) in coronavirus relief support. In effect, Trump hopes to bribe the American people — even at this late date — into supporting his attempted coup.

How has America's mainstream news media responded to Trump's ongoing coup attempt? With some notable exceptions, the professional political observers and commentariat are focused on the political countdown clock and what they see as Joe Biden's inevitable ascension on Jan. 20. But while the media obsesses about a return to "normalcy," Trump continues to scheme and plot.

https://www.salon.com/2020/12/24/the-coup-and-the-grift-understanding-trumps-evil-endgame/

Nothing to see here: Why media keeps downplaying Trump's coup attempt
by Chauncy Devega, DECEMBER 23, 2020 12:00PM (UTC)

In their efforts to downplay the dangers of Donald Trump's ongoing coup against democracy, too many members of the commentariat and other "professional smart people" are attempting to use a form of Jedi mind trick on the American people.

Based on the lack of broad public outrage about Trump's continuing effort to overturn the 2020 election, it would appear that many Americans may in fact be vulnerable to such a ploy.

Over the last few days, the Trump regime's coup attempts have escalated into an ever more desperate and dire stage. The New York Times reported that a cabal of Trump's conspirators met in the Oval Office last Friday where they had a "discussion" about how to overturn the 2020 presidential election by invoking martial law, using a special counsel to invalidate the election, and seizing voting machines to "inspect them" for "irregularities." Of course, the intended result of any such "investigation" would be to manufacture Trump's "re-election."

It should have been the headline in every newspaper and other news media outlet in the United States. But it was buried on page A28 of the print edition of the New York Times, and was also not a leading story in the online edition.

https://www.salon.com/2020/12/23/nothing-to-see-here-why-media-keeps-downplaying-trumps-coup-attempt/

Then there's this, from Axios:

A senior administration official said that when Trump is "retweeting threats of putting politicians in jail, and spends his time talking to conspiracy nuts who openly say declaring martial law is no big deal, it’s impossible not to start getting anxious about how this ends."

"People who are concerned and nervous aren’t the weak-kneed bureaucrats that we loathe," the official added. "These are people who have endured arguably more insanity and mayhem than any administration officials in history."

https://www.axios.com/trump-officials-alarmed-overturn-election-results-a844d1d2-acb2-47a9-87ce-ac579458b1ea.html

We NEED to pay HEED, folks!