A bombshell Washington Post report reveals that Trump and his allies are secretly planning to deploy military force against protests and prosecute an “enemies list” of critics if he wins in 2024.
The report indicates that his allies are making concrete plans to seize control of the government if Trump returns to power in 2024 by taking over the military, DOJ, and intelligence agencies to crack down on dissent, punish opponents, and shield him from accountability.
Trump intends to deploy the military on Inauguration Day to quell any civil protests against his retaking office and is assembling an “enemies list” to punish critics, including former officials critical of him, such as John Kelly and William Barr. He also plans to appoint a loyalist attorney general to follow his directives on prosecutions and a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family.
His allies are drafting plans to invoke the Insurrection Act on day one, allowing Trump to deploy the military against protests. He will purge the senior military officer corps, rooting out “disloyal” civil servants. Trump will concentrate more power in the White House in his second term and rapidly execute an agenda developed by the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, which has drafted detailed plans called “Project 2025” tto help Trump capture the federal justice system and military.
Here’s an excerpt from The Atlantic‘s Tom Nichols’ op-ed about the Post’s report:
The coalition of prodemocracy voters—I am one of them—is shocked at the relative lack of outrage when Trump says hideous things. (The media’s complacency is a big part of this problem, but that’s a subject for another day.) For many of us, it feels as if Trump put up a billboard in Times Square that says “I will end democracy and I will in fact shoot you in the middle of Fifth Avenue if that’s what it takes to stay in power” and no one noticed.
Trump hasn’t taken out billboards, but at his rallies and press events he’s shouting it all as loud as he can, and the people around him are making plans to carry out his wishes. Meanwhile, millions of voters are folding their arms like shirty children and threatening to sit out the election because they don’t like their choices. Some are threatening to withhold support, in particular, for Joe Biden if they don’t get their way about student loans, climate change, or policy toward Israel. They are living in a booming economy that is outperforming any other developed nation since the start of the pandemic on many measures—and they are miserable and angry about it.
Many voters resent hearing all of this. They think they are being bullied into a binary choice between two candidates they do not like, and so they engage in wishcasting: If only someone could beat Trump for the GOP nomination (no one will); if only Biden would step down (he won’t); if only America didn’t rely on the Electoral College (it does); and so on. Trump and Biden are headed for a showdown unless illness or death intervenes. Even if Trump goes to prison, the Republican Party has become so fully corrupted that he could likely still run and get the nomination anyway. And the Electoral College isn’t going anywhere, either.
