1y ago

Trump Amplifies Calls to Jail Top Elected Officials, Invokes Military Tribunals

www.nytimes.com

A post that Mr. Trump circulated on Sunday called for Liz Cheney to be prosecuted by a military court reserved for enemy combatants and war criminals.

Included in the list of people to be brought up for war crimes against the United States were Current President Joe Biden, Current VP Kamala Harris, former VP Mike Pence, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger and Representatives Adam Schiff, Jamie Raskin, Pete Aguilar, Zoe Lofgren and Bennie Thompson.

70 comments

Punishment can include and is not limited to death.
I think there's a bit of a sobering moment that we have a Presidential candidate that is calling for specific names to be held to a firing squad.
- He tried to get Pence killed four years ago. We've known for at least that long that this is who Trump is. Republicans don't care.
  
  Hey, they may be handing the country over to Fascism, but at least the people they hate will suffer!
  
  They do care. This is exactly what they want, a maniacal dictator who will kill all the "others" to implement a religious ethnostate
  
  When I first read that I thought it said Prince and I was seriously horrified. Now that I see it's just about Mike pence, eh.
  
  So if Pence would have died, that would have been an official act.
- Donald: we need a Night of the Long Knives.
  SCOTUS: let us open the kitchen drawer for you.
- The guy that avoided drafting, is Putin's bitch and said vetetans who died in the war were loosers.
  
  "Loser" Why is that so hard for so many people?
- bit of a sobering moment
  That’s why I’m investing and drinking lots of alcohol. Who wants to be sober as society collapses?
  
  Bourbon and soda on the rocks!
- The trump/Hitler comparison is becoming less ridiculous
  
  It was never ridiculous, people just weren't able or willing to look into the future far enough. If someone said this would happen back in 2016 you'd be ridiculed.
  And now look where we are.
Can we please just label the republican party a domestic terrorist organization already?
- Biden could, according to SCOTUS.
  
  If Trump has his way, Ai will point to his post as a reason to do just that.
  
  If you're worried what will happen if Trump wins the election, then you should consider buying "Trump insurance" by betting online that he'll win.
  When enough people bet that Trump will win, then it creates an incentive for someone who can influence the outcome to make a short term leveraged bet that Trump will lose.
  You'll gain utility from the trade even if you lose the bet.
- do you need some official office to sanction you're beliefs? they're fucking terrorists. what are you going to do about it?
How bout we jail this insurrectionist for high crimes against the United States
- No can do, high crimes aren't against the law.
  
  Biden can do whatever he wants now right?
- keep waiting on the state to do the right thing and see where that gets you.
Even Hitler waited a little bit before making it clear he was going to purge
- The more I think about trump saying that he could shoot someone in broad daylight in front of millions, and not lose a single supporter….. the more I think he was right.
- His dad lived to 93. -_-
Damn, Liz Cheney really lives rent free in that asshat's head.
- CDS! CDS! CDS!
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell,
Lol, the angry orange wants to punish the turtle man who covered for him. You pick the best allies there turtle boy!
- It would be schadenfreude to see Donald execute McConnell, but I wouldn't be able to really enjoy it.
  
  He's on his way out, anyway, so the time it would have been a benefit is gone.
Well I for one look forward to fleeing our upcoming dictatorship
- Why? If the imperial core isn’t safe, no where is.
- I really wish my wife had agreed to move to New Zealand back in 2016.
  
  You may want to check up on the news from New Zealand, things are getting rough there too.
Military tribunals? Sounds like some of his article 2 powers with absolute immunity now, their use cannot be questioned. Go to town Trump, say the conservatives on the supreme court.
Biden and co will literally get hunted down by Trump's goons if he doesn't use his new powers to do what needs to be done
- just a bunch of cowards really
Hah, I expect that Mitch McConnell is still going to vote for him.
- Of course. So will Pence.
Wonderful.
The delusional Q Anon 'secret military tribunals any day now' belief now stands a reasonable chance of actually happening.
- Doubtful that the military would actually do that. Trump while President was reportedly annoyed at basically being told 'no' that General Kelly said that:
  The President’s loud complaint to [then-White House chief of staff] John Kelly one day was typical: “You [f------] generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”
  “Which generals?” Kelly asked.
  “The German generals in World War II,” Trump responded.
  “You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?” Kelly said.
  But, of course, Trump did not know that. “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the President replied.
  The President may be Commander-in-Chief but the oath is to the Constitution. Obeying the President and officers are also a part of the oath but with the caveat that it is according to the regulations and UCMJ. You not only don't have to but you're taught to explicitly not follow an illegal order in the US military.
  Not that US military members have given illegal orders that were followed but it is a little different to basically order the military to essentially start enforcing essentially a government coup for a politician against the US' own citizens.
  
  I mean, I agree with you that most military leaders and soldiers would not do this.
  But your own example kind of shows the likely strategy:
  What did Hitler do? What did Stalin do?
  Fire or banish or kill enough leaders until you get ones that will listen to you, and re orient your troop pools so that you have a decent number of whole units that are ideologically aligned and thus likely to comply.
  Trump's entire modus operandi, now crystalized in extreme detail with Project 2025, has been figure out a way to replace everyone who is not an ideologically aligned stooge willing to literally break existing laws to carry out the whims of the God Emperor, at literally every level of government.
  I obviously cannot know that this would be successful or in what timeframe.
  I can only look to history for many examples of similar things occuring, and see more and more checked boxes making this more likely.
  I'm sure the militaries of many other coup'd countries are told not to follow illegal orders, and I'm also sure that many in our modern military and time would resist, perhaps even violently as Stauffenberg did.
  But the trend is looking astonishingly bad.
Surely, surely, a significant portion of conservative voters can see that this isn't what democracy should look like, even if they're ardent republican supporters.
- republican allegiance is to the bible, not the constitution. they say a lot of things about the constitution, but in the end, they just want christo-fascism. some of them are true believers in the make believe, others just use to justify their own cruelty.
  either way, their motives don't matter. it's all about what we're going to do about it.
- When your neighbor waves a loaded gun in your face, do you whine about how no neighbors should be behaving like that? Is that effective? That's basically begging for morality.
  Stop preaching morality to your foes. The servatives are too far gone. The billionaires are too far gone.
  No more hopium and copium.
  We need to wake up to what IS, as opposed to what we wish it were.
  If morality could solve any socioeconomic imbalance, billionaires would ban and outlaw morality.
  The fact that morality is always promoted and no one went to prison or was assassinated for promoting morality means one of two things: either a) morality doesn't exist and can't work even in principle, and instead we have a bullshit narrative to make people more timid and more self-doubting to make from them more manageable subjects, or b) real actual morality does exist, and when taught WOULD threaten the billionaires and other exploiters, and thus WOULD effectively produce societies centered on broad wellbeing, but we were never exposed to it in religion or in any university level class.
  If it's b) then such morality isn't based on begging and pleading with the unwilling and uninterested parties. And also if it's b) then preaching such morality would be viewed as a threat to today's trash status quo and a threat to the morbidly wealthy billionaires.
- Whether or not it's "what democracy should look like" is an opinion often based on whether you're on (or think you're on) the giving or receiving end of the oppression.
  
  I get that, but I suppose I'm trying to say that there's a point at which even if you're not on the receiving end of the oppression you have to recognise that something's not right.
What, no Hillary Clinton? Is he trying to lose again?
Would be a reaaaal shame if someone interpreted this as a threat to the rule of law that necessitated some kind of presidential act. There's gotta be plenty of realistic ways to fuck with him in an official capacity.
- Not doing it would be literally suicidal on Biden's part.
  
  Can’t wait to see Biden take the “high road” and just sit back and let this play out and get himself executed. 🤦‍♀️
This country went from undecided on the death penalty to openly embracing presidential hit squads seemingly over night. The right is saying who is on their list while the left is saying they should make one. Good times ahead.
Wow does he realize that by doing this he's basically making it self defence for Biden to anticipate him?
- Maybe if he woke up enough to realize what's going on around him?
We live in the worst time line.
Non-paywall; https://archive.is/2024.07.02-190256/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/01/us/politics/trump-liz-cheney-treason-jail.html
- Thanks man.
Liz Cheney is not an enemy combatant. If this is Trump's definition of one, that as an authoritarian any dissent to his will is considered treason, then he'll still need to change the rules of military tribunals to allow prosecution of non-combatant civilians. In case anyone hasn't read it, Wikipedia has a page on Military tribunals in the United States - Wikipedia
It's curious Trump seems to believe that mere political dissent equates to enemy combat and physical violence. Imagine what he must think about Jan 6 that he has been keeping to himself. Can anyone say "project"?
He's saying he must be given a military tribunal as an enemy combatant?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Mr. Trump, using his account on Truth Social on Sunday, promoted two posts from other users of the site that called for the jailing of his perceived political enemies.
One post that he circulated on Sunday singled out Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman who is a Republican critic of Mr. Trump’s, and called for her to be prosecuted by a type of military court reserved for enemy combatants and war criminals.
A separate post included photos of 15 former and current elected officials that said, in all-capital letters, “they should be going to jail on Monday not Steve Bannon!” Those officials included Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris, Mr. Pence, Mr. Schumer and Mr. McConnell — the top leaders in the Senate — and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker.
The list in the second post also had members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, including Ms. Cheney and the former Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger, another Republican, and the Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff, Jamie Raskin, Pete Aguilar, Zoe Lofgren and Bennie Thompson, who chaired the committee.
The Biden campaign denounced the posts in a statement, saying that Mr. Trump “is doubling down on threats to our democracy,” adding that “the Supreme Court has now paved the way for him to do exactly what he is saying he will if he wins.”
Ms. Cheney responded with her own social media post on Sunday evening, saying “Donald — This is the type of thing that demonstrates yet again that you are not a stable adult — and are not fit for office.”
The original article contains 504 words, the summary contains 268 words. Saved 47%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
That's OK because it's an OFFICIAL Act of the Presidency!

70 comments