More Michael Flynns?
This is the fourth in a series in which we show how Trump’s MAGA movement is the new American fascism. We use a template laid out in an article published in2003 by historian Lawrence Britt, which analyzed seven fascist regimes and the common threads linking them. You can read last week’s blog here.
Week IV. Supremacy of the Military.
“Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.”
We all know that Trump evaded military service, famously earning the nickname “Cadet Bone Spurs” from Iraq war veteran Senator Tammy Duckworth. Even still, his fascination with the pomp and power of the military, along with his determination to politicize it, is obvious. Remember, he attempted to stage a Soviet-style military procession down Pennsylvania Avenue, a stunt fashioned after the one he witnessed on Bastille Day in Paris, in 2017—an action which was promptly derided as the action of a “wannabe banana republic strongman?''
Beyond the spectacle, some of his actions during his presidency made it clear that should he be reelected, he will attempt to turn the men and women of the United States armed forces into praetorians loyal not to the Constitution, but only to him.
For years, Trump has sought to redefine the role of the military in American public life. In his 2016 campaign, he spoke out in support of the use of torture and other practices that the military considers war crimes. Just before the 2018 midterm elections, he ordered thousands of troops to the southern border to combat a fake “invasion” by a caravan of migrants. In 2019, in a move that undermined both military justice and the chain of command, he gave clemency to a Navy SEAL found guilty of posing with the dead body of a captive in Iraq.
And in 2020, during the George Floyd “Black Lives Matters” protests, Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and use the military to quell the protests. After Lafayette Square was cleared of peaceful protestors by U.S. Park Police and National Guard troops (and the use of tear gas), the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, accompanied Trump and his entourage on the walk from the White House to St. John’s Church for a photo-op while dressed in his combat fatigues.
Milley later apologized, saying that "my presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics"—a statement for which Trump has never forgiven him. As recounted by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, Trump wanted 10,000 troops in the streets of DC, and the 82nd Airborne deployed on American soil—demanding that Milley take charge of the effort. When Milley and others resisted, deeming the deployment of the National Guard an appropriate response, Trump shouted, “You are all losers! You are all f***ing losers!” Turning to Milley, Trump said, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”
Time and again, Trump was frustrated with the refusal of military leadership to stray from their oath to defend the Constitution and the safety of every American. Thankfully, we found out that the generals abided by rules and standards—not blind loyalty.
Notwithstanding that loyalty, we came perilously close to a coup. On December 18th, 2020, Trump hosted Michael Flynn and a group of other election deniers in the Oval Office, where, for the first time in American history, a president seriously entertained using the military to overturn an election. They pored over a draft of a proposed Presidential order requiring acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller to “seize, collect, retain and analyze” voting machines and provide a final assessment of any findings in sixty days, well after the Inauguration. Reflect on that: The proposal was to ask the military to seize voting machines.
Trump never forgave “his'' generals. He once complained to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly that American generals were not as loyal as he believed German generals were to Adolf Hitler. General Milley’s reward for his vigilance in keeping the military from interfering in domestic politics and in the post-2020 election coup plotting was to be the target of Trump’s insinuation that America’s top general deserved to be put to death.
We were fortunate that the military stood firm during Trump’s first term. What can we expect should there be a second? Trump associates are currently drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act—a move authorizing the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement—on Trump’s first day in office, allowing him to deploy soldiers to civil demonstrations in America.
Maybe that is what Trump was referring to in this not-very reassuring interview with Sean Hannity.
We should not assume any of this is hyperbole: : Trump has publicly expressed regret about not deploying more federal force during the George Floyd protests, and has said he would not hesitate to do so in the future.
And what of Trump’s musings about using the military to attack drug cartels in Mexico—an idea that would violate international law unless Mexico consented to it? That once-derided idea has since taken on broader Republican backing, and Trump intends to make it a reality.
Trump also hopes to use the military to round up undocumented migrants, an illegal move that runs afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the deployment of US armed forces for domestic law enforcement. But Trump aims to circumvent it by invoking the Insurrection Act again, claiming that illegal border crossings constitute an anti-government “rebellion.”
We cannot simply cross our fingers and hope that the military will hold firm to the belief that their loyalty is to the Constitution and not to the president. As Tom Nichols put it, “if Trump succeeds in simultaneously capturing the U.S. military while gutting the other key institutions that protect democracy—especially the courts and the Justice Department—nothing will stop him from using force to put down opposition and stay in power.”
Next week, Rampant Sexism.
