Donald Trump the Megathread part II - Mod Warning added to OP 10/1/26

According to Kristi Noem in 2021, it's undermining of States rights and is in fact an act of war.

Trump sending the National Guard in is surely against US law . They are under the control of states and unless of National emergency , ie going to war against a foreign country it is illegal for the federal government to call up them without the state governor issuing the order .

Scaringly it's all 1930 Germanish

That's all well and good, however given the oath speaks to defending the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, that answer might prove insufficient. When the Executive Branch is actively engaged in actions to effectively betray the Constitution, to include ordering the military to act domestically on the basis of a clearly fabricated premise, there is a valid question as to where the line is drawn. I appreciate the deference to an apolitical stance, but there is an argument that the oath would demand action at some point, even if that is deliberate inaction.

Listen to Manic, guys.

He almost certainly has a better background in, and insight into, these issues than any of us do. So if the question is “what will the army do?” in X or Y scenario, my money is on Manic having the most authoritative and reliable answer.

And, if the question is “what should the army do?” in this or that scenario — Manic has thought about this, and has been trained by people who have thought about this, more deeply and for a longer time than most of us have. So, again, I think we should attach a lot of weight to his views.

Yes, all US officers and enlisted service personnel take an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic". I don’t doubt that they take that very seriously. And they are trained in and formed by a tradition and a culture that takes that very seriously.

But here’s the thing; under the US Constitution it’s very much not the army’s job to restrain, control or if necessary remove a President whose unlawful or unconstitutional actions threaten the republic. Constitutionally, it’s the job of Congress. For the army to step in and exercise (by force!) powers that it doesn’t constitutionally have, to seize powers that constitution vests in others, would not be supporting and defending the Constitution; it would be subverting it; even overthrowing it. It’s not, fundamentally, any different from, say, a President refusing to comply with the orders of the courts.

I’m not saying that such a thing could never happen. You could hypothetically imagine a president who was trying to exercise his powers as commander-in-chief to perpetrate a coup, using the armed forces — say, he orders them to use force to occupy the Capitol and the Supreme Court and to detain Senators, Representatives and Justices. Those are the kind of orders that an officer might conclude his oath requires him to reject.

But, short of that? If a president is acting unlawfully or unconstitutionally or in a way that threatens the republic, I think most officers would feel that what their oath requires of them is this; they must uphold the rights of the courts to pass judgment on these matters, and the rights of Congress to legislate and/or to impeach the President in response to these matters, and they must refuse orders to interfere with or obstruct those rights

(And, as always, they must refuse orders which are manifestly unlawful — "Sergeant, take these disarmed prisoners out behind the barn and shoot them". But that's not really the issue presented today.)

“Bonapartism” is the term for when a country’s army asserts the right, or the responsibility, for making and enforcing political decisions. US military culture has a horror of Bonapartartism. (Lest anybody run away with the idea that I am an idealistic US army fanboy, I will say here that I suspect a good part of the reason why US military culture rejects Bonapartism is because they think it’s bad for the army.)

The bottom line here, I think, is that in the US the fools cannot look to the army to save them from the knaves they elect.

You can't go up a stairs by stepping down?

The precedent that matters here is the fact that 'I was just following orders' is not a defence when you're being brought up in the Hague to answer for your role in the fascist takeover