Coup

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff was preparing for Donald Trump to take the government by force, according to a new book.

Quite the blockbuster story from the Washington Post last night. According to a new book by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker (“I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year”), General Mike Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — America’s top career military job at the Pentagon — grew increasingly concerned after the November 3 election that Donald Trump was planning a military coup.

Milley was so worried about it, the book says, that he reached out to other military officials in order to figure out how to make Trump’s coup fail. According to the book, Milley repeatedly invoke Nazi Germany, comparing Trump’s claims of election fraud to the infamous 1933 Reichstag fire, when someone burned down the German parliament, and Hitler used the fire to usher Germany into the Nazi dictatorship. “This is a Reichstag moment,” Milley reportedly told aides. “The gospel of the Führer.”

According to the book, Milley thought Trump would need to gain better control over the FBI, CIA and DOD if he were to succeed in a coup:

If someone wanted to seize control, Milley thought, they would need to gain sway over the FBI, the CIA and the Defense Department, where Trump had already installed staunch allies. “They may try, but they’re not going to f---ing succeed,” he told some of his closest deputies, the book says.

That observation is particularly troubling as Trump did in fact solidify his power over the Pentagon, installing several uber-political cronies following the election loss. A lot of us were asking why Trump would care to install such crazy partisans at the Pentagon with only two months left in his administration. Now we know, at least what Milley suspected.

In December, with rumors circulating that the president was preparing to fire then-CIA Director Gina Haspel and replace her with Trump loyalist Kash Patel, Milley sought to intervene, the book says.

I continue to growing increasingly worried about the future. Trump clearly isn’t letting up. The lies continue and grow. And while many Republicans in Congress were willing to criticize Trump in the immediate aftermath of the Insurrection, now they defend him and the abhorrent behavior of those “tourists” who attempted to overthrow our government that day. A growing number of Republicans, and Fox News hosts, are now treating the domestic terrorists as heroes. Cries of “who killed Ashli Babbitt?” have been growing on the extremist right, including among congressional Republicans, and even Trump himself. (Spoiler alert: Ashli Babbitt killed Ashli Babbitt.) At the same time, the law enforcement officials who risked their lives that day for our democracy are now being cast as the real criminals.

It’s one thing to suspect that Trump is plotting a coup. It’s quite another to have those concerns legitimized by our country’s top general. I think it’s pretty much a done deal that Trump was at least considering a coup. And what worries me is, what’s next? Tensions are far worse today than they were six months ago. A growing swath of Republicans think the election was stolen. Trump seems eager to push his followers to the breaking point, and Trump’s fluffers in Congress and at Fox, Newsmax and OAN are all too happy to feed the flames. We are currently on the path towards more violence. And I simply don’t know how we change course.

PS This is the topic of today’s podcast. You can listen to the first half hour for fee here.