Joint Chiefs chairman feared potential 'Reichstag moment' aimed at keeping Trump in power

[iemanja]

Military leaders knew Trump was a fascist, desperate to hold on to power. They took active measures to prevent Trump from forcibly seizing power, as the rest of the article following the excerpt explains.

In the waning weeks of Donald Trump’s term, the country’s top military leader repeatedly worried about what the president might do to maintain power after losing reelection, comparing his rhetoric to Adolf Hitler’s during the rise of Nazi Germany and asking confidants whether a coup was forthcoming, according to a new book by two Washington Post reporters.

As Trump ceaselessly pushed false claims about the 2020 presidential election, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, grew more and more nervous, telling aides he feared that the president and his acolytes may attempt to use the military to stay in office, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker report in “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year.”

Milley described “a stomach-churning” feeling as he listened to Trump’s untrue complaints of election fraud, drawing a comparison to the 1933 attack on Germany’s parliament building that Hitler used as a pretext to establish a Nazi dictatorship.

“This is a Reichstag moment,” Milley told aides, according to the book. “The gospel of the Führer.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/joint-chiefs-chairman-feared-potential-reichstag-moment-aimed-at-keeping-trump-in-power/2021/07/14/a326f5fe-e4ec-11eb-a41e-c8442c213fa8_story.html

[David__77]

1. January 6 was hardly the key element in the attempted coup.

“Insurrection act” and “cross the rubicon” were the cries of the coup faction.

[Poiuyt]

2. 'They're not going to f**king succeed': Top generals feared Trump would attempt a coup after

election, according to new book

Also on CNN. A really good, but really scary article:

https://us.cnn.com/2021/07/14/politics/donald-trump-election-coup-new-book-excerpt/index.html

The top US military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, was so shaken that then-President Donald Trump and his allies might attempt a coup or take other dangerous or illegal measures after the November election that Milley and other top officials informally planned for different ways to stop Trump, according to excerpts of an upcoming book obtained by CNN.
The book, from Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, describes how Milley and the other Joint Chiefs discussed a plan to resign, one-by-one, rather than carry out orders from Trump that they considered to be illegal, dangerous or ill-advised.
"It was a kind of Saturday Night Massacre in reverse," Leonnig and Rucker write.

-snip-

Milley spoke to friends, lawmakers and colleagues about the threat of a coup, and the Joint Chiefs chairman felt he had to be "on guard" for what might come.

"They may try, but they're not going to f**king succeed," Milley told his deputies, according to the authors. "You can't do this without the military. You can't do this without the CIA and the FBI. We're the guys with the guns."
In the days leading up to January 6, Leonnig and Rucker write, Milley was worried about Trump's call to action. "Milley told his staff that he believed Trump was stoking unrest, possibly in hopes of an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military."
Milley viewed Trump as "the classic authoritarian leader with nothing to lose," the authors write, and he saw parallels between Adolf Hitler's rhetoric as a victim and savior and Trump's false claims of election fraud.

[iemanja]

6. chilling

and of course Jan 6 was an attempted coup, with the Sec of Defense awol so that he couldn't activate the DC national guard.

[jalan48]

3. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff feared a coup and yet Republican's don't want an

investigation into what happened. How many of them were in on the coup?

[UTUSN]

4. K&R

[moondust]

5. Good thing TFG is dumb as a brick.

He's probably never heard of the Reichstag let alone how the fire there was used by Hitler to issue the "Reichstag Fire Decree (which) suspended most civil liberties in Germany, including habeas corpus, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right of free association and public assembly, and the secrecy of the post and telephone.[18] These rights were not reinstated during Nazi reign. The decree was used by the Nazis to ban publications not considered "friendly" to the Nazi cause."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire#Political_consequences

Very relieved to know the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was/is well educated and not a toady. In banana republics it often is up to the military to decide whose side they take and thus who will hold power in the event of a coup attempt.

Thank you, General.