It would have required equipment abandonment, base evacuation, and general chaos. It was not an order that went through the usual national security and military channels, but an order that went through Dear Bag’s Bag Guy, who had been trained in how to write it down in a form that the military could actually treat as maybe . an order. It didn’t happen because Trump’s own military officials were taking it slow and convincing Team Trump that he would look like a fool if a six- or seven-week evacuation resulted in press images of triumphant locals rummaging through abandoned U.S. military assets.
However, the overall picture remains consistent. Trump was constantly cursing people he hired himself and blaming them when something wasn’t going his way. Though he was quick to explain “crucial” acts based on what his admirers would most admire him for, he was so amazingly ignorant of everything that he was constantly convinced that he could change his mind by dueling with coworkers who did wanted him to do something else. He would get angry again later, convinced that his co-workers had made him make the wrong choice; In some cases, his staff really worked to mislead him in order to obtain the guidelines they themselves preferred.
It’s the same story throughout the Trump administration, but especially alarming considering how much of our national security has been put into that mix of deceit, “gut instinct”, and defiant action. Trump lost confidence in any new attitudes that were not in line with his desire, for example to use active military forces against demonstrators or to help him overthrow an election. And there was always a new vicious hack ripped from the bowels of incompetent conservatism ready to reassure Trump that it was good and right to ask about things that were illegal and / or terribly violent because of conservatism without Trump Help and his fascist fascist will long outlasted him.
The news that the Blowhardian golf cheat first reacted to its loss of the election by rushing to crawl the US military stance overseas is not exactly surprising. In the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, an election promise was to be fulfilled that he had not kept for four years. In Germany’s case, being an asshole to NATO in general, and Chancellor Andrea Merkel in particular, was probably just part of his eternal devotion.
Another feature of the Axios piece is the apparent efforts of former Defense Secretary Christopher Miller and other Trump officials to recover after facilitating some of the worst and most dangerous acts of Trump’s presidency. All of this chaos and even possible uprisings are portrayed as infighting, not a breakdown of the government.
“Miller told his staff he had three goals for the Trump administration’s final weeks: # 1: No major war. # 2: No military coup. # 3: No troops fighting citizens on the streets,” reports Axios.
Oh. Well then. That was really an ambitious plan for the Department of Defense for the “final weeks” of the Office: Prevent the outbreak of a “great” war and prevent a militarily-assisted collapse of US democracy. We can view Miller’s efforts to avoid military coups and violence as part of his team’s defense to block the Capitol cop aide, even if Trump supporters, incited by Trump himself to rebel, are allowed through the Capitol Halls chasing after the Vice President or after lawmakers whom Donald Trump had described as insufficiently loyal. After Miller and his allies became uncomfortable about the idea of Trump using the military to carry out a coup, the alleged response was to prevent the National Guard from taking action to protect against that coup.
If democracy was to be overthrown on Trump’s orders, most of the people who were appointed by Trump would appear to have been indifferent as long as they were not involved in the bloodshed themselves. The premise that has been pointed out over the past few months is that we should commend Trump’s attitudes for not actively supporting his coup, rather than treating them with disgust for stepping aside in the course of the coup. That probably won’t be the story historians want to tell in the end. Nor is it much different from Republican lawmakers who now insist that their attempts to cast enough votes to invalidate Biden’s victory – the exact demand of the insurgent rioters – did not really support Trump’s attempted coup, but merely “asked questions “or” diffuse tensions “as the brown shirts of movement attacked the building from the outside.
All of conservatism is quick to insist that no matter how many times they have made Trump’s bids, or how much death or chaos it resulted, they actually deserve legitimacy if they bravely allow things to go this far, but no further. Gas light through and through. The final books written about the Trump presidency are going to show more lopsided behavior than we suspected, more incompetence than we ever suspected, and unstable, likely dementia-impaired, ragealcoholic attitudes and reset policies in response to the TV shows he is last seen. Any recent exposure to the press is the result of duels with Trump teams trying to see themselves as those responsible for cracking down on everyone else’s malice. Only after the dust settles will we learn that the vast majority of Trump’s allies and supporters have been more than happy to assist with every act of corruption, joke promotion, and national sabotage.
Of course they were. That’s why they were hired.
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