Trump Knew He Lost – Here’s How We Know
Trump, even as late as this weekend, repeated the lie on his blog that the election was stolen from him by non-existent voter fraud. He bragged that 80% of Republicans believed that lie as he desperately tries to keep his iron grip on the party that he wants destroyed. Trump is nothing, if not obsesively vindictive. What’s telling, though, have been his actions. How do we know? Trump tried to wreck as much of the US government as he could on the way out the door. I don’t think he would have done that had he truly believed he won.
On November 9th, John McEtee, aide to Trump, told Douglas Macgregor, new acting defense secretary Chris Miller’s senior advisor, that Trump wanted full military withdrawal, by Inauguration Day, from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, all of Africa, and…wait for it…Germany. Recall that Miller had just taken on the defense job after Trump fired Mark Esper by tweet just a few days earlier. This, as you would imagine, was an impossible task, and worse, it was from out in left field. A written order followed two days later that commanded the Pentagon to withdraw troops from Somalia by December 15th, and Afghanistan bay January 15th. It was personally signed by Trump in his idiotic scribble. The order sent shockwaves through the Pentagon as leaders realized that this was an “off the books” operation with none of the usual planning, table top simulations, or alternatives. This was just Trump being Trump, and luckily the Pentagon held the line, slow walking the order to run out the clock.
At the same time, Trump tried to wreck the CIA and dig dirt on his enemies by installing loyalists at the top of the agency trying to get the director, Gina Haspel, to resign. Mercifully, that effort also failed as Pence and WH counsel Pat Cipollone came to Haspel’s defense. Switching tactics, Trump then installed a Nunes staffer and Trump loyalist, Michael Ellis, to the general counsel position at the NSA, a position difficult to terminate by the new administration. In an appropriate end to his short career, Ellis resigned in April after he had been sidelined by an IG investigation into his role in the handling of classified information and placed on indefinite leave.
It’s now just coming out that Trump’s DOJ tried to get the courts to unmask a Twitter user who had gotten under Devin Nunes skin with a parody account @NunesAlt. Barr’s attorneys sought a grand jury subpoena of Twitter to reveal the user’s actual name, and Twitter had fought the subpoena until the demand was dropped after Biden took office.
These are just a few examples of the lengths to which Trump went in the waning days of his infestation to wreck as much of the government that he could, install loyalists as his spies, and punish his supporters’ enemies. Luckily the actual public servants in these agencies kept their oaths to the Constitution, and repelled Trump’s attacks. Next time (if there is a next time) we might not be so lucky.
Donnei Trump is a total traitor to our nation. Unfortunately he has tens of millions of rabidly loyal followers feverishly awaiting the chance to be part of a totalitarian fascist regime led by Ihr Führer.
His treasonous actions and inactions may not always meet the strict legal definition of treason, but that is a legal shortcoming that should be corrected.
There is really only one solution to this intense threat…
.
Not to disparage the well-meaning Nick Carraway, who just wrote another ‘lets all try to get along’ post below, but Nick and many other of y’all are continuing to greatly underestimate the intensity and magnitude of this national threat from within.
This traitorous anti-American cancer had been slowly growing for decades, it burst into a hyper-metastatic virulence when Trump came to power.
It will take more, much more, than ‘be nice’ to eradicate it.
Do -not- view many/most of today’s Republicans, MAGAots, and Trumpanzees as just another American political movement, albeit ‘a little’ extremist.
They are every bit as committed and manipulated as were Hitler’s legions of Nazis.
Their goals are the total acquisition of absolute power by their chosen Führer and his minions; and the utter –destruction– of their enemies.
In case you don’t think of yourselves as included within that ‘enemies’ group, you’re delusional.
The RW elites orchestrating all of this, mostly behind the scenes [Trump is after all mostly a mere puppet, very effective nonetheless], know exactly what they are doing. And they’re simply running an updated version of the Nazi’s 1930’s playbook, which is still extremely effective on some people [~120million+ of your neighbors…].
1I’m a big boy. I can take the heat. I guess my point is one that is hard to articulate. It’s more of a feeling than a matter of fact and it’s more a lament than any concrete suggestion moving forward.
I think the most concrete suggestion I can make is that safeguarding our democracy are priorities one, two, and three. If we pass no other bills in the next two years we need to pass legislation guaranteeing the right to vote, an end to gerrymandering, and removing dark money from politics. That’s more important than climate change, the minimum wage, and anything else anyone can come up with. Simply put, none of those things are possible without it.
2When I was in 4th grade I had a friend who was a total fan of all things military. Today we would say military otaku. At the age of 10 he had a far greater understanding of how the military works and its history than Donald Trump. He treated the little toy soldiers, sailors, and Marines we both owned with greater respect.
So it is no big surprise that giving Trump command of the U.S. military would result in chaos. He wanted military parades in his own honor. He wanted to use tactical nukes at will. And so on.
What confuses me is how loyal some people in the military stay to him. I believe in 2016 the vote his way wen’t nearly 2-to-1. In 2020 that fell drastically, but well more than a third wanted four more years of it.
But here is the hard part — DJT was actually not wrong in wanting to extract the U.S. from the endless wars in the Middle East. Of course he was too lazy or negligent to get it done effectively, but at least he was willing to oppose and overrule the strong command inclination to stay there forever. After all, victory was is and always 18 months away.
Of course it is hard to imagine DJT operating a garden hose without something going sideways. I think the damage he did was more from that than from his habitual vindictiveness.
3Nick Carraway @2, I know what you mean, I agree with you 90% of the time. Didn’t mean to be harsh.
4It was a good essay, but with ~two sentences that seemed to advocate ‘be nice to them’, to which I unfortunately now always have a knee-jerk reaction… A measure of how far gone most of us are now, which is one of the points you made. :[
Nick Carraway @ 2,
May I add that abolishing the Electoral College would go a long way in giving each citizen a vote that truly counts in elections, not the votes of just a selected few.
5Carole Leonig has been making the rounds on her new book about the Secret Service. If I was Biden, I’d want a very close review of those people guarding me and my VP and families.
6Kudos to the author, Nick and Sandridge’s comment which closely aligns with my thoughts regarding trump, a junior grade incompetent wannabe dictator, since before he ran for prez.
7Why? ‘Cause ain’t nothing new under the sun about the human nature of people in general and dictators especially be they in any endeavor, enterprise.
Imagine if trump were more capably ruthless.
Some people I talk with about the trump effect (normally not very long) have no idea how close we came to a coup d’etat; those who wanted one and aren’t part of the privileged class have no real understanding of the possible, likely, negative effects upon themselves and the people they care about.
This country got a slight reprieve with Biden but the trumpsters are still in power and can reverse this reprieve rather easily.
I wish I had a viable answer; I do not.
We also know that Trump knows he lost because he’s been cashing the pension checks since January.
8Trumpf rose to his level of incompetence long ago, so I agree with the comment that he’s a puppet- who’s strings are pulled by a group of traitors. Traitors in that they fully intended to destroy our democracy- and they still have his ear. Trumpf really does not know what he’s doing from moment to moment using his own brain.
9Of course Trump knew he lost, from the day the last state certified the vote, if not before. But he HATES to lose and he loves chaos, so he did his best to wreck the government for his successor, and stir up the malice of his cult against a Democratic administration. He lies as easily as he breathes, so his claim that the election was stolen from him is just one more effort to keep his followers boiling mad.
Why the Congressional GOP goes along with him is harder for me to understand. They stand up and repeat the Big Lie every chance they get, and oppose all things Biden, to the detriment of their constituents. Are they truly afraid of the people who vote for Trump? Do they just fear the loss of their jobs? It’s not like they’re actually doing their jobs. In their unwavering support for Trump, they seem to have forgotten how to govern. Like Trump himself, they only know how to oppose. We need to stop the craziness by soundly defeating as many of them as possible in the midterm elections, and passing as many bills as possible, as quickly as possible, to benefit the American people. We don’t have time to waste.
10Grandma Ada @ 6
True but that works both ways.If I were a Trump I’d be wary of my guards if I got back in after the way I’d treated them.
And so say Aurelian, Balbinus, Caligula, Caracalla, Commodus, Elagabalus, Galba, Gordian III, Numerian, Pertinax, Philip II, Probus and Pupienus
11DJT is a malignant narcissist, plain and simple. I have one of these as an ex in law. Power hungry control freaks with an unbelievably high opinion of themselves and totally ruthless. Worship them and you’re reasonably safe. Defy them in the slightest way and they will spare no effort to destroy you; even their own children and grandchildren. There ought to be a law preventing them from walking among us.
12here’s hoping an enterprising journalist goes to at least SOME of the 120 Military Poobahs against Biden and ask them to compare whatever Biden is being accused of versus the post-voting Trump’s crash orders to pull troops.
Somehow, I think pulling troops from an entire continent might have both military AND diplomatic implications.
13Something I’ve noticed about the most vocal supporters of the Big Lie, they tend to be legislators form gerrymandered places. Republicans elected state-wide or county wide, like the Arizona governor of Sec of State in Georgia were the ones who certified the election. It’s not universal, and even Republicans who will say Biden won in a fair election still want to starve the poor. But I think it’s further evidence of the damage done by gerrymandering.
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