A team of no fewer than four state media propagandists in the employ of MSNBC — four being necessary, apparently, for some reason to pump this screed out, as if parroting government talking points is really such a heavy lift — laid the groundwork by fearmongering about Trump being a dictator, subverting Democracy™, blah blah blah, before getting to how they themselves are engaged in the subversion of the democratic process.
That’s called irony, and the state media has made an art out of it.
Via NBC News (emphasis added):
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.
That all sound really terrible. Overturning the Democracy™ apple cart? Not on the Deep State’s watch!
That’s why they have to undermine Trump’s potential future presidency — in other words, the product of the democratic process — so as to save Democracy™.
Continuing:
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,” said Mary McCord, executive director of the Institution for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law…
Other participants include Democracy Forward, an organization that took the Trump administration to court more than 100 times during his administration, and Protect Democracy, an anti-authoritarian group.
“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,” said 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.”
The problem that Trump poses for the technocracy — which has been fully in control of the American government for decades, arguably since the assassination of JFK in ’63 — the duly elected president in the dystopian technocracy is not meant to exercise any real power. He is a relic, an artifact, a façade.
Biden is a good boy, as evidenced by his frequent hand-wringing that he’ll “get in trouble” with nameless entities if he goes off-script. He knows that he’s a puppet, and that’s fine with him because he uses his position as a vehicle for personal enrichment and self-aggrandizement.
Trump, on the other hand, for whatever other faults, is his own man. He is often unpredictable and has clearly demonstrated a resistance to being controlled. That is and has always been his real crime — not mean Tweets or porn star dalliances or whatever.
Continuing:
Wary of Trump’s staying power — he is running about even with President Joe Biden in the polls — Democratic lawmakers already known to be adversarial to Trump are working on a parallel track.
Among the least-understood tools available to a president is the Insurrection Act. Vaguely worded, it gives a president considerable discretion in deciding what constitutes an uprising and when it is OK to deploy active-duty military in response, experts say.
Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill worry that Trump might invoke the act to involve the armed forces in the face of domestic protests or if the midterm elections don’t go his way.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., is crafting a bill that would clarify the act and give Congress and the courts some say in its use. Its chances of passage are slim given that Republicans control the House and are largely loyal to Trump.
