In the aftermath of the highly contested 2020 election, America’s political elites revealed in striking fashion how a shadow campaign had worked to thwart Donald Trump from becoming president again.
The Time article, “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election,” gave Americans a disturbing glimpse behind the curtain of how radical groups, labor unions, and powerful corporations worked to “fortify” the election.
This time around, the nation’s political elites are doing American voters the courtesy of giving them advance notice on how they will keep Trump from becoming president again.
In an NBC News article, the alarming machinations in the “deep state,” which is a euphemism for the established bureaucracy in the federal law enforcement, diplomatic, and intelligence communities, were revealed in stark fashion.
The NBC News article leads into the story with full-fledged, baseless fearmongering in an apparent effort to induce the reader into a state of paranoia.
Donald Trump is sparking fears among those who understand the inner workings of the Pentagon that he would convert the nonpartisan U.S. military into the muscular arm of his political agenda as he makes comments about dictatorship and devalues the checks and balances that underpin the nation’s two-century-old democracy.
A circle of appointees independent of Trump’s political operation steered him away from ideas that would have pushed the limits of presidential power in his last term, according to books they’ve written and testimony given to Congress. Most were gone by the end. In a new term, many former officials worry that Trump would instead surround himself with loyalists unwilling to say no.
Trump has raised fresh questions about his intentions if he regains power by putting forward a legal theory that a president would be free to do nearly anything with impunity — including assassinate political rivals — so long as Congress can’t muster the votes to impeach him and throw him out of office.
Furthermore, the NBC article delves into the reported preparations that the “deep state” is undertaking in order to subvert the Trump campaign and a potential presidency.
Now, bracing for Trump’s potential return, a loose-knit network of public interest groups and lawmakers is quietly devising plans to try to foil any efforts to expand presidential power, which could include pressuring the military to cater to his political needs.
Those taking part in the effort told NBC News they are studying Trump’s past actions and 2024 policy positions so that they will be ready if he wins in November. That involves preparing to take legal action and send letters to Trump appointees spelling out consequences they’d face if they undermine constitutional norms.
“We’re already starting to put together a team to think through the most damaging types of things that he [Trump] might do so that we’re ready to bring lawsuits if we have to,” Mary McCord, executive director of the Institution for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law, told NBC News.
“We are preparing for litigation and preparing to use every tool in the toolbox that our democracy provides to provide the American people an ability to fight back,” added Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward. “We believe this is an existential moment for American democracy and it’s incumbent on everybody to do their part.”
“He’s a clear and present danger to our democracy,” said William Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine and defense secretary in the Clinton administration.
“His support is solid. And I don’t think people understand what living in a dictatorship would mean.”
Donald Trump’s “dictatorial” actions while in office included putting up with an overwhelmingly hostile press, keeping the United States out of foreign wars, negotiating peace deals in the Middle East and in Asia, securing the southern border from an invasion of unauthorized migrants, cutting taxes and slashing regulations, drilling for U.S. oil and gas in order to foster energy independence, and respecting Americans’ rights during the Covid pandemic response.
In other words, there is absolutely nothing in the historical record that would objectively lead a rational person to conclude Donald Trump would, in reality, be a “dictator.”
This is precisely the kind of priming that the law enforcement and intelligence community did with the Russia collusion hoax, which subverted the Trump presidency and baselessly accused former President Donald Trump of being a “traitor.”
The Russia hoax was weaponized in order to press federal bureaucrats into refusing to cooperate with the Trump presidency’s objectives, such as securing the southern U.S. border.
There is absolutely no basis for this hysterical forecasting of what a hypothetical second Trump presidency would look like.
This isn’t even journalism — it reads like a psychological operation to manipulate the American public to advance state propaganda objectives.
Such intense propaganda is likely to only get worse in the course of the 2024 election campaign.
The state-run media is signaling its intentions. We better pay attention.
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