This is a just a casual observation, but I think we really should solemnly consider the implications of the following:
At the Pentagon, the first of the three tweets raised fears that the president was getting ready to announce strikes on North Korea or some other military action. Many said they were left in suspense for nine minutes, the time between the first and second tweet. Only after the second tweet did military officials receive the news the president was announcing a personnel change on Twitter.
Here are the three tweets in question. Notice the nine minute gap between the first and second of these:
After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
….Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
….victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
If anyone thinks this is tolerable, they’re just not people we should be listening to. This isn’t how a president should announce a policy change. It’s not how he should treat service members. It’s not a level of trust between the president and the Pentagon that is acceptable. It’s not a tolerable national security risk, since the North Koreans must have been wondering the same thing.
It can’t be accepted. It must come to a prompt end.
What have we learned with this Presidency? We have learned how unprofessional, unintelligent, and unpredicable Trump is.
A President on Twitter is absurd in itself; a President tweeting policy? Inconceivable.
A President politicizing a Boy Scout Jamboree, using profanity and rambling about personal grievances? Unbelievable
A President who made campaign promises and then essentially acted exactly the opposite on basically all of them. Not normal
A President who consistently attacks his own staff and drives them away when he questions their loyalty: Absurd
It seems to me that having Trump on Twitter is like handing a loaded gun to a toddler and pretending he won’t blow everyone’s heads off. Nothing about this presidency is normal, and none of it is acceptable.
If I could give this multiple 4’s, I would.
Thanks, DD. I know you’re as frustrated, outraged, and angry as I am. I’m standing beside you as we fight this disaster of a president.
That’s what we need to do – stand together for the long haul.
Well #2 & #3 aren’t that uncommon. The politicizing part of 32 that is, not the rest.
blowing off campaign promises is as much a part of being a politician as fund raising.
but Trump’s crazy speech to the scouts was way out of line.
Yeah! You don’t talk to kids like that. He makes a mockery of his office which angers me more than his policies and appointments. I didn’t like Reagan’s policies and appointments, but at least he preserved the public dignity of his office.
Sorry but none of the previous Presidents decided to do the exact opposite of all of their personal promises as soon as they came into office. Trump has only been consistent on the stupid border wall and stopping Muslims from entering the country. All his other domestic promises have been completely abandoned. So, no, he’s not normal; he’s a psychopath.
We have to agree to disagree. Most campaign promises are ignored and/or the opposite happens.
I can remember many campaign promises that Obama made that he didn’t follow through on. When I brought it up here and elsewhere, I was told not to be so naive and that campaign promises are essentially meaningless. Once in office, you focus on what the POTUS does.
Ergo, Trump gets the same “pass” on this particular issue as all other POTUS’s do.
The rest of the issues with Trump are a horse of a different feather.
Just saying…
Obama’s campaign promises.
About 70% of what he promised was enacted at least in part, and the remainder was in large part directly blocked by congressional opposition.
But not so radically or quickly. Usually there is a show attempt or some event is chosen as an excuse. “I wanted to but because of X (9-11, TBTF crash, …) I couldn’t.”
Normally, a President doesn’t just stick up his middle finger a few months after the election.
I know it’s the easy pose to take that all politicians lie, but it’s actually not very common to abandon all campaign promises, let alone pursue the opposite policy. Politicians can be blocked from enacting their desires, or they can be wrong about the results of their policies, but it’s actually pretty unique for them to straight-up lie about what they intend, as Trump has done. Even modern Republicans, who lie about fucking everything, have attempted to keep to more than half of the campaign claims they make. Trump is something much different, and much more damaging.
And this leads me to another point. This facile cynicism is a vital component of building support for Fascists like Trump, in part by undermining the unity of the opposition. As Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism:
A description that should be familiar to many who frequent this blog.
On #3 — it’s completely normal for a politician to make campaign promises and then renege on them after elected. As long as DT keeps pushing to repeal the ACA, Trumpsters won’t crap too much about any of his broken campaign promises — they probably even know that the wall is a dumb idea but as long as the fiction remains alive they’ll take comfort in it.
WRT to the rest of your list, that’s exactly what his fans adore about him. They like rude and crude (that’s how they personally behave or fantasize about behaving). Doubt they can ever get enough of DT sticking it to some high muckey-muck and they don’t bother to consider if it’s warranted or appropriate for Trump or a President. To their ears is sounds like plain speaking and not the mushy and waffling speech of most politicians and which they are sick of. Trump and his fans are ID people. Horrifying to those that value civility and comity, but even if we are a majority, apparently we’re a weak majority.
Many of the Republicans they elected to Congress are masters of mushy talk and waffling speech.
Consensus is building on your second point: NPR Boy Scouts Chief Apologizes For ‘Political Rhetoric’ In Trump’s Speech. Now if we can get consensus that it’s totally inappropriate for Trump to politicize and increase revenues for his property holdings, that would put some serious chinks in his armor.
If we don’t start seeing these for what they are–assertions of arbitrary power with the dare “What are you going to do about it?” — we will be emotionally whiplashed and distracted.
He warned us in July 2015 that we would be captivated watching what he would do next. He would be the center of attention and that would win and keep him the Presidency. Time to move on beyond the normalizing of these daily information war sucker punches.
Yes, they will get even more outrageous as his troubles increase. And the commercial media will continue to mainstream him. And the GOP media will continue to collaborate with him.
As they say in Iceland and other countries, get your pots and pans ready.
As for the story, it does not give comfort that there are people in the military ready to disobey illegal orders. Or willing to be insubordinate to insanity.
It gives me great comfort! Their Oath is to the Constitution, nor the President!
Precisely. Here, in fact, is the oath all commissioned officers take, and you will note it says nothing about obeying the President:
Not saying there would never be officers who’d jump to obey even a Trumpian order, but these guys at the top are professionals with a clear understanding of their obligations. I suspect, for example, that Mattis is hanging on in part to protect the military from being hijacked into a wag-the-dog meat grinder.
” foreign and domestic“. Yep. I remember that oath, in a slightly different form but with the essential elements intact.
I also remember the phrase, which has apparently been removed, “and to obey all lawful orders of my superiors”. Emphasis by me.
The third time was my postal oath, which IIRC was “will support and uphold“. Postal workers being non-combatants.
I was taught early to respect oaths. All a poor man owns is his honor.
I went looking to find whether “lawful” was in the oath of enlistment, and found an article about the oaths taken upon enlistment and accepting an officer’s commission:
http://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/swearing-in-for-military-service.html
Under the article was a lively discussion about whether “legal” used to be in the oath of enlistment, and “USMC MSgt” said this:
which drew this response:
That commenter then cites to a discussion of the ethical obligations and the competing considerations involved when faced with orders that present a moral or ethical dilemma, without being blatantly illegal. Pertinent quote:
https://www.army.mil/article/47175
Possibly ‘lawful’ was in the civilian oath that I took in 1967. I used to remember every word, but across fifty years …
Also what does “God” have to do with an oath to the Constitution? Nothing. This is a continuing unhelpful anti-communist era anachronism. The oath should be revised to eliminate that unnecessary. The US is not a theocracy no matter how much the GOP wishes it were.
One of the links I pursued in checking this out said that the “So help Me God” is optional if the individual has strongly held objections to swearing an oath to the Deity. Like “I swear or affirm”.
You’re not going to get the whole of military law into an oath.
There is a very strong presumption that a military order is lawful, and the burden of proving otherwise would be on the refusing subordinate, in a trial conducted by his superiors, so the system is pretty strongly set up to discourage insubordination, but at least since Nuremberg, it is clear that a soldier is not only authorized but required to disobey certain unlawful orders. A soldier also has the right to require that any order be given in writing, at least that is in the law, but certainly subject to some elasticity in emergency situations. As a practical matter, if you’re going to disobey a direct order, you better be damn sure somebody above the guy giving the order strongly agrees with you. ( I was a Courts and Boards clerk for a battle group in Korea )
Apparently my memory is wrong about the Postal Oath, although I remember that at the time I wondered about removing “defend”. It’s a different law section but the same Oath as the military.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/1011
“My generals.” He really is a fascist.
Who knows whether he actually consulted “his generals” at all. Trump lies. all.the. time people. Nothing he says, nothing, should ever be taken at face value. He wants to be viewed as a god, an absolute monarch. His association with an understanding of government is very marginal. He basically is still in campaign/rage mode. He’s not interested in any other mode.
The impression I am getting is that this was a complete surprise to everyone in the military. Talk about a total clusterf*ck.
http://americannewsx.com/hot-off-the-press/trumps-transgender-ban-nonsense/
Trump’s Transgender Ban Is The Act Of A Third World Despot And Total Nonsense
Wherein Jim Wright eviscerates our Twit-in-Chief’s latest idiocy in all its tawdry inglory.
If ‘my generals’ doesn’t chill one to the bones what will?
It will play out here much as it did in Turkey: an old-school faction of the military will attempt a coup, which will fail through the non-cooperation of a faction that have been captured by the alt-right. (This morning’s announcement about transgender enrollment was a signal to the latter faction.)
Then there will be purges, and Trump will emerge apparently much strengthened; but he will know that he was saved only by the “loyal” military and that he is totally dependent upon them. They will call the tunes from that point forward and he will have to dance.
That is when things will seriously go south for “civil society”: dismissal of Democratic state governments, military campaigns to “clean up” the cities, etc.
Quite possible.
More possible with every day that goes by.
AG
Yes, we were warned about this. And the prominent faction which has subverted the military and government are, ironically, mostly self-identified Christians who consider themselves patriots. Imagine that.
Some of these pieces have been in play for a long time; some are new. Having successfully de-legitimised the media and punditry there is nothing left but the courts to oppose him; yet the AG is Trump’s Frick. Yes, Turkey is the model and yet Europe and NATO still formally tolerate even Erdogan, he played them all like a fiddle; it is always about the money.
It’s hard not to see that decades of being institutionally lied to by corporations for profit, of aspiring to wealth above integrity, have come home to roost. Those who speak truth to power will be among the first to go.
No, it’s not about money, and it is a category error to think that it is.
That is not to say that there are not grifters hanging about; of course there are.
But you understand nothing about Trump’s people until you understand that they want nothing for themselves. They only want to harm others.
Yes, I agree. Sorry was unclear; the permissiveness of the institutions was my intended subject in that assertion. In this example Europe’s submission to Erdogan’s fascism as they see their billions in investment there at risk if they oppose him with the means at hand. Same as in the States where institutions such as the media and corporate boardrooms strategise their positions on Trump. That ‘red lines’ and social or political conventions are blown through repeatedly is weighed against clicks, profit and the vulnerability of their wealth to the machinations of autocrats.
I agree that for the ideological leadership of these movements it is all about revenge.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return. – W H Auden, September 1 1939
Thanks for your posts.
The Pentagon is dumber than Trump if they really thought that this was some sort of unilateral declaration of war. Like believing a carny hustler announcing “The Three-Headed Dog Lady!!!” at a state fair. Even if he was serious he would have to plan with his generals, and with the leak factor going on in the White House now it would have remained a secret for about three minutes.
It sure spread fast.
Google News screen shot, 7:05 PM, EDT:
And so on down the page.
Smells like planted info, to me.
False news? False spin at the very least.
I don’t have time right now to track its first appearance. Was it Buzzfeed at 9:11AM EDT today?
Anybody?
ASG
P.S. I dunno about the rest of the country, but Trump voters? Especially in the military? They will love this act.
And if it is somehow overturned in court?
They will love Trump even more.
And you think he’s “dumb!!!???”
Watch.
P.P.S. Gee!!! What a coincidence!!! You and WAMO posted this “news” almost simultaneously!!!
P.P.P.S. Lemme see…
Trump’s first tweet on this subject was at 8:55AM, EDT. I can hear the spinmeisters on Trump Twitter watch now.
Some small amount of time later, this bullshit was invented and approved. (I call it “bullshit” because there is not even a transparent attempt at attribution to some sort of “unnamed source or sources” in these two paragraphs. It could just as well be a Pentagon janitor. Or of course, totally imagined.)
Then it had to be spread.
A few minutes later?
SHAZAMM!!!
It’s news!!!
That’s the way it works today, folks.
Bet on it.
Sad shit in the so-called “Fifth Estate” these days.
Sad shit.
As I said in a previous thread on this site, I’m pretty sure Mattis has issued a memo to the Joint Chiefs that is similar to Nixon’s last DOD Sec., James Schlesinger’s famous memo to the JCOS to ignore any order for military action that is not countersigned by him. In this case, Mattis (or McMaster). Everyone knows that Trump’s mad; it’s just the GOP Congress that doesn’t want to piss off Trump’s supporters by impeaching him. As I said on Nov. 9, though, Trump will not last a year. Either he will just walk away from the job or will stroke out or will be forced out by the Mueller investigation. It’s all coming to a head in the next 6 months certainly.
The US and the world are being held hostage by a Repub congress that wants a tax cut for the wealthy so bad, they’re willing to look the other way as trump endangers us all! Impeach or Article 25 stat!
Bad taste and stupidity are not high crimes and misdemeanors.
I was going to add cruelty but then recalled that “we tortured some folks.”
Ah, wondered when you would mention this.
My main concern is that Trump truly is Ruling by Fiat.
The GOP will continue to provide Trump cover, whilst Trump provides the GOP cover for the nefarious plans to plunder, pillage and otherwise vandalize the country.
This series of tweets disturbed me more than most of his insane blather – which I feel is just there to distract everyone from what’s really going on. Putting aside for the moment the issue of LGBT rights, etc, the fact that Trump would pronounce on Twitter a huge change like this for the Military – without consulting “his” Generals, as I feel certain did not happen – is a serious issue.
While I totally support LGBT rights, I hope the seriousness of what Trump did yesterday does not get “lost” amidst the rest of the clamor.