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With less than two weeks until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris is honing her closing arguments. She is moving away from the joyful warrior we saw early in her campaign and toward a candidate with a blunt message: Donald Trump is unfit, unhinged, and too dangerous to return to the White House.
And she’s not the only one who shares this feeling. She is joined by a who’s who of Republican officials from the Trump administration and many of the Pentagon’s top brass.
General John Kelly, former White House chief of staff, called Trump “the most flawed person I have ever met in my life,” who “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”
Mark Esper, former secretary of defense, said Trump is a “threat to democracy.”
John Bolton, former national security adviser, believes Trump is “unfit to be president.”
General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described Trump as “a fascist to the core.”
Remember, these people worked closely with Trump.
Now let’s move on to alarming things that Trump himself has said:
“I need the kind of generals that Hitler had … People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.” Trump said this in a private White House conversation, according to The Atlantic.
Kelly said Trump was incredulous when he was told that the American military swear an oath to the Constitution and not the president.
This was not the first time Trump has emulated Adolf Hitler. When he once praised the German dictator, Kelly shut him down. “He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things,’” ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing.’”
It is no secret that Trump admires dictators like Hitler. He wants to be able to govern like China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. In other words, with no rules and no restrictions. John Bolton wrote in his memoir, “It is a close contest between Putin and Xi Jinping who would be happiest to see Trump back in office.”
Trump wants the military to do his bidding so he can eliminate “the enemy within” by deploying it against his political enemies. When asked who specifically is an “enemy within,” he named Congressman Adam Schiff, who chaired the January 6 committee, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Additionally, during his run as a “dictator on day one,” he says he will unleash the military on “radical-left lunatics.”
Never has a presidential candidate suggested, out loud, turning the military on his political rivals or the American people.
Should you think he is exaggerating, Trump has suggested such action before but was dissuaded by some of his more level-headed advisers. In his memoir, Mark Esper wrote about Trump’s reaction to the protests following George Floyd’s murder. “The protests and violence had him so enraged that he was willing to send in active-duty forces to put down the protesters. Worse yet, he suggested we shoot them.”
General James Mattis, another former secretary of defense, reacted to Trump’s violent impulses with incredulity. “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens.”
Trump’s desire for retribution against his detractors is well documented. He wanted General Milley executed for treason and proposed calling back retired Admiral William McRaven and General Stanley McChrystal to active duty so they could be court-martialed. Both are critics of Trump.
A second Trump administration would not be populated with people like Esper, Kelly, Milley, and Mattis, who curbed Trump’s worst instincts. Only sycophantic loyalists need apply.
Kamala Harris put it this way today: “The bottom line is this, we know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be, what do the American people want?”
And if Trump should win, what would that say about our country?
Once again, the most important thing you can do right now is vote. And get anyone and everyone else to the polls with you.
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Dan
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