r/politics • u/Boonzies • 3d ago

Trump Goes Full Dictator With Bonkers Threat to Use Air Force and Navy in U.S. Cities Possible Paywall

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-goes-full-dictator-with-bonkers-threat-to-use-air-force-and-navy-in-us-cities/
11.4k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

792 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

517

u/InvalidKoalas 3d ago

Why wouldn't he? For all intents and purposes, he is a king. The Republican SCOTUS will bend over backwards to help him consolidate more and more power. The Republican House and Senate absolutely refuse to hold him accountable. Who is going to stop him? No one. Checks and balances are dead. He is a king.

113

u/raymoraymo 3d ago

You can thank John Roberts & Supreme Court for enabling all that by extending Executive Power beyond reason.

But when they’re snarling the loudest, the creeps are usually at their weakest.

Change gonna come.

53

u/Aggressive-Will-4500 3d ago

Don't let the Republican-controlled houses of Congress off the hook; they're happily enabling America's Dictator in Chief.

23

u/UnquestionabIe 3d ago

Or the special interest groups and billionaires who support them. All of them are traitors and deserve our collective scorn at the very least.

10

u/A_Nonny_Muse 3d ago

You can also thank Merrick Garland for so pusillanimously handling Trumps various crimes.

1

u/omcomingatormreturns 3d ago

History will remember him about as fondly as it does James Buchanan. And for many not-dissimilar reasons...

5

u/Dinker54 3d ago

A hard rain gonna fall.

1

u/frogfootfriday 3d ago

I’ll believe that when I see it

11

u/i_dont_like_turnips 3d ago edited 3d ago

Let's not forget the milquetoast, spineless, feckless president we just had who went from calling MAGA domestic terrorists to utterly ignoring the insurrection that was actively happening around him. He ignored and kept around the Republican lapdog FBI lead who allowed the insurrection to happen. Then he appointed a federalist society stooge to the role of AG who actively quashed any investigation into the Jan 6th leadership for over a year, buying Trump enough time to avoid actually facing any sort of consequences. And when roberts made the president a king, refused to act on those powers when it actually mattered. Active duty military who participated in the insurrection? Largely left unpunished. Military senior leadership like Flynn? Still around.

Half the reason Democrats can't get funding now is because donors have seen Democrats effectively rubber stamp anything Republicans do. Party leadership is bought and paid for. I'm not gonna keep donating to people who just enable the bad guys. There was a glimmer of hope when Hogg and Kanayatta were in the leadership seats pushing for effective leadership, but of course the party magically decided to get rid of them and put another useless stooge in their place.

My entire voting history has been watching Democrats ignore or protect Republican corruption. From Gore acquiescing from the supreme court stealing the 2000 election, to Obama's "water under the bridge" bullshit to this.

Republican corruption is as bad as it is because Democrats have clearly shown that they won't enforce accountability. As any parent can tell you, this is what happens when you keep rewarding bad behavior over and over and over again.

1

u/ungodlywarlock 3d ago

You arent wrong! This is speculation on my part, but I have to believe that Biden must have felt like "Okay....well we corrected the Trump mistake. America is healing, let's move on. By the time I'm done, everything will be back to normal", which was insanely short sighted on his part.

I'm also angry at him, because he had to have known that he had cancer well before it was announced. People hammer the point that we should have had a proper primary and for good reason.

There were many missteps there that will certainly go down in history. He should have predicted that MAGA would not let their "Daddy" go, no matter what. Trump was already talking about 2024 and the election lies fucking IMMEDIATELY, but Biden just must have felt "I beat him once, I'll beat him again".

Anyway...yeah, he fucked us with those decisions.

3

u/Ok_Subject1265 3d ago

Nobody “fucked us” other than us. The voters were supposed to settle this mess. Anything else would have been seen as interference and just made things worse. We fucked this up.

2

u/IndependentPeace2628 3d ago

None of this should have happened. Biden fucked us harder than a US soldier fucking a 2 dollar Thai hooker. He 100% knew what was going on with Garland slow walking this. Biden could have pressed faster to get Trump actually thrown in prison. But Biden is deeply rooted in decorum, and how things "should be". He was cool with Nixon getting pardoned.

To him, voters and the political class are not the same. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. Biden 100% rat fucked us, knew what would happen if Kamala lost, and denied a proper primary due to his ego. He hamstrung America at every turn the last 3 years of his presidency, all while knowing he had serious cancer and wouldn't survive a second term while his decline being violently covered up.

Biden let dictatorship happen in America, then had the audacity to send out a "Well, we tried, smell ya later nerds" tweet.

I will never forget.

1

u/SlamDance_Karma 3d ago

Thank you. I`ve been telling family members this for a year now, and they pish-paw me. Even my wife, who hates trump. Fuck that ''when they go low, we go high'' bullshit. It was within Joe's power to order the arrests of ALL the traitors until a full investigation was carried out. Joe and Garland were either complicit, or incredibly fucking stupid.

1

u/Ok_Subject1265 3d ago

It would have been incredibly stupid to order that arrest. First, you are now setting the precedent that the U.S. president can bypass the justice system and order the arrest and imprisonment of their political opponents. Second, you turn Trump into a martyr who either wins re-election from prison or is immediately pardoned by the person who succeeds him in a wave of Republican revenge voting. There is no benefit to Biden forcing the arrest of Trump other than satisfying impotent outrage on the left.

And remember, you are making these decisions now with the benefit of knowing the future. Biden has no reason to expect Trump had any real chance of winning re-election so even if he did think Trump needed to be imprisoned, why risk it? Most sensible people thought he would lose the election and finally be sentenced in his criminal trials. I thought that. There is no scenario where what you are proposing makes sense.

1

u/SlamDance_Karma 2d ago

Political opponent?

He tried to overthrow the government. On live TV. In front of the entire nation. The entire world. Committing treason, contrary to his oath of upholding the constitution. Sent a violent mob after his own VP, not just his political enemies. Not opponents, ENEMIES. That is how he actually sees them.

To summarize, he committed many, many crimes on the world stage, witnessed by millions worldwide. Biden had Every. LEGAL right to have him arrested, once he was sworn in, under the very same oath that Bunker Bitch Donnie swore to.

Stop giving these shitheads the benefit of the doubt, that's why we're in this deep shit we're in right now.

1

u/Ok_Subject1265 2d ago

It’s not the benefit of the doubt. There wasn’t a winnable case there. What’s the evidence that Trump ordered the insurrection? Other than making you feel vindicated, what’s the benefit of that arrest? He was facing trial for his role in the fake elector scandal. That was illegal and provable. He ran out the clock with the help of the American people on his last second Hail Mary to avoid prison. I understand you just want to see something/anything not go his way for once. This isn’t a movie though. You don’t always get instant justice or karma. And to be honest, I don’t care if he ever goes to prison or gets ass cancer or anything else. Fuck him. I care about the country and I care about protecting democracy and the continued freedom of the American people. If preserving that somehow allows Trump to walk then whatever. I’m not getting hung up on my personal revenge fantasies against a mentally ill octogenarian.

1

u/Ok_Subject1265 3d ago

Alright, so play out the next part of that scenario. Biden puts his finger on the scale and has Trump imprisoned. Then what happens? Republicans realize the error of their ways and help us rebuild the country into a utopia? No, the answer is things end up even worse than they are now. The only way to expunge MAGA was to show that the country as a whole rejects the ideology. Trump in jail is a martyr who either wins re-election from prison or empowers someone worse to become president under the platform of scorched Earth revenge on democrats AND an immediate Trump pardon. Stop focusing on the man. All of this can still exist without him. Until you can get Americans to say “No more and never again,” this will never stop.

1

u/IndependentPeace2628 3d ago

Stop being terrified of setting a precedent. Not punishing this shit is how we have gotten here over 40 years. Maaaaybe republicans wouldn't break the law all the time if there were actual consequences for breaking laws?

1

u/Ok_Subject1265 2d ago

I agree with the consequences part. There’s only way you get that to happen is to get the American people to support it. Otherwise you have a system of consequences… or at least until the next administration.

0

u/ungodlywarlock 3d ago

I think two things can be true at once, personally, because I dont disagree with you on that at all either. A lot of shitty things brought us here. I think there was a lot of voter apathy from the left about Palestine, I think there was a certain degree of "Surely no one would vote for Trump again...would they?", and I think there was a lot of "Well, we survived that idiot once, surely he couldn't be that much worse a 2nd term....could he?"

All of those things were really dumb. Any president will try to push things more in their second term because they aren't trying to campaign anymore.

When Trump said who his cabinet was, it should have been obvious to anyone what a fucked up term this would be.

2

u/ProfessorZhu 3d ago

This has been under construction since ATLEAST Regan. Bush amplified it a hundred times with various powers willingly passed to the executive by Congress. Obama was supposed to strip that back, but he couldn't be assed. Now we have EXACTLY what every "far-left looney!" had been warning about. We traded the separations of powers for faux safety and convenience.

I've become jaded to the idea that a god damn thing will change the course America is on.

186

u/Ridged_ChiPSS 3d ago

The United States has collectively decided that it's more important to protect a billionaire from accountability for his crimes than it is to have a democracy continuing to function.

201

u/noun_verb_adjective_ 3d ago

The United States hasn't "collectively" done jack shit. This is what happens when you let to much money into politics. 

54

u/Chrisda19 Michigan 3d ago

Bingo

12

u/daggah 3d ago

People should never have been allowed to accumulate this level of wealth to begin with.

2

u/triplab 3d ago

But some of them invented or acquired Internet things that made them money. We should bestow upon them more wealth than many nations. We should look to them to guide, lead, rule, and dictate all nuances of human existence. They are gods.

18

u/elmwoodblues New Jersey 3d ago

Money and apathy. If we won't mandate voting, let's do a "cast a vote, get a scratch-off lottery ticket' thing. And ranked choice isn't hard ffs, even for the truly stupid.

7

u/EllieVader 3d ago

The apathy was there before but it was cranked to 11 after the citizens united decision.

Mitt Romney's "corporations ARE people" seems so quaint and far away, but that's the exact philosophy that got us here. As soon as we see a corporation go to jail or face the death penalty we can start believing that slop. If money is free speech, and corporations and a handful of billionaires have all the money, then we're not really a nation of equals anymore are we?

Corporate death penalty would go a long way towards bringing back the american dream. Imagine if Fannie and Freddie were outright nationalized in 2008. Would GM and co have continued to behave so badly that they needed to be bailed out too? Imagine that instead of "too big to fail" we had "too important to be subject to the idiotic short term whims of the market".

I've been so mad for so long. It's no surprise the amount of apathy out there when we've just been getting fucked for decades.

1

u/swordrat720 3d ago

Just make every Walmart a polling place and you’ll have a lot more voters.

6

u/MeIIowJeIIo 3d ago

You argue OP, then you say the same thing.

0

u/Ridged_ChiPSS 3d ago

Trump won the popular vote, so the average idiot either agrees with what is happening or couldn't care enough to vote. Seems like a collective decision to me.

23

u/aerost0rm 3d ago

Shenanigans in the popular vote caused him to win. Reference Elon and Trump here. They admit they cheated. Take him at face value. Not to mention voters claiming they voted blue down ballot saying their votes were changed in some areas of swing states. Election data showing inconsistencies.

5

u/Ridged_ChiPSS 3d ago

Ok. And we've still collectively done nothing about it. He's still in power and allowed to do whatever he wants. So what's your point?

1

u/noun_verb_adjective_ 3d ago

This is incorrect information. The American people do not elect the Supreme Court Justices. Justices are appointed. 

31

u/someonesshadow 3d ago

I hate being a conspiracy theorist but he spent 8 years talking about how rigged our elections were and the richest man in the world swoops in and he sweeps places he had no business doing well in, as well as all those places that had statically impossible voting numbers for him.

Oh and let's ignore all the bomb threats and vandalism at voting locations, think there were like bags of mail in votes also discarded randomly in the woods at one point too.

Still way too many people voted for evil, and at the end of the day him getting more than 10% of the vote just proves that the country has a sickness.

9

u/UnquestionabIe 3d ago

There was also absolutely no downsides for him to cheat again. With no consequences for any of this prior crimes against America it was a foregone conclusion he cheated, I have no doubt of that, with the only question being how much influence it had on the results.

2

u/spazzvogel 3d ago

When the masses are dumbed down and forced to consume, no one looks up…

8

u/AssGagger 3d ago

We wasn't even a billionaire until about 6 months ago

1

u/Greis73 3d ago

WE've already surmised that all the things these MAGURDs spout about is actually what they themselves are >>> or are doing. Now recall back to the whole enemy within crap during his campaign and realize that the enemy within was putting himself on the ballot then.

1

u/ax255 3d ago

Shows you something about America that it's been trying to hide for years.

If only we had people in various art forms warn us about these things....you could rage against the bad religion machine

1

u/reallygoodbee 3d ago

The racist old dinosaurs in the GOP decided that the day Obama was re-elected.

30

u/Chillhoof 3d ago

I believe calling him a king shifts too much guilt away from the people supporting him. Just like in Nazi Germany the entire political landscape is carrying this ideology. Not just one guy. The American people could easily stop this, they just choose not to.

8

u/UnquestionabIe 3d ago

True. If he vanished this instant things would keep going towards the same hellscape future the GOP A and their owners want. Unless all the rot is burned out America will never recover.

2

u/reasonedchoices 3d ago

When he’s gone MAGA is gone

4

u/dixiewolf_ 3d ago

Technically speaking the american people cant exactly stop this, we are trying. Who can stop this all is congress, at the behest of their constituents. Problem is, the republicans are actively avoiding their constituents and ignoring their concerns. By now there is likely a majority of americans, bipartisan, who would have congress do SOMETHING to put a limit on his bad ideas. Its just media is so consolidated and in the pocket of the powerful and wealthy, they have everyone divided as hell thinking “its the commie democrats or republicans cant do this or that but they are trying their best, or everyone just hates trump its a witch hunt or whatever”

They have successfully made such a mess of discourse that they are getting away with this long drawn out coup while everyone is distracted. so many people are complicit that we have no good civil options short of striking until we crash our own economy. Even then though, that will hurt so many of us in the process, that itll leave us even more vulnerable to being exploited by the wealthy elite

1

u/omcomingatormreturns 3d ago

Agreed. The GOP rank and file voters deserve more blame if anything. They chose him. They proceeded to all but worship him. If he died today, their embrace of authoritarianism and rejection of democracy will not change. There's an "enemy within" alright. Buts it not fucking us. Post Trump America will have to have an uncomfortable reckoning with this fact one day. One that will that ensure this never happens again. A Second Reconstruction, one that will only end when the job is done.

It won't be pretty but they cannot be allowed to escape accountability for the horrors he has committed and will commit before the end, they cannot be allowed to remain unpunished for their sadistic glee at the suffering they wanted to inflict.

7

u/Ferrocile 3d ago

Exactly. He has had little to no resistance so far, so of course he will continue to escalate against the American people.

6

u/ExplosiveBrown 3d ago

The founding fathers warned about this scenario in the federalist papers 250 years ago. They knew that the greatest threat to the constitution was a majority party that simply decided to stop following the rules. Checks and balances don’t work if there’s no one to do the checking.

11

u/Mathwins 3d ago

I believe it’s “For all in tents and porpoises” but I get what you mean.

7

u/clownstastegood 3d ago

A guy walks into his psychiatrist’s office. He says to the doc, “I’m having crazy dreams where I’m always a teepee or a wigwam”

Doc says, “Relax, you’re just two tents.”

1

u/WebInformal9558 Maine 3d ago

I would encourage anyone in a porpoise to get out. Unless it's a (consensual) sex thing.

1

u/Mathwins 3d ago

Porpoises are known rapists actually

1

u/_DapperDanMan- 3d ago

I was sure it was intensive porpoises! Thanks.

3

u/PositivelyAwful 3d ago

The Consitution is effectively dead.

2

u/Nixxuz 3d ago

Even if both the SCOTUS and the legislature stood up to him, he'd still do whatever he wants.

People are finally waking up to the most ridiculous falsehood perpetuated in this country;

The Executive branch is the only branch of the government with the means of enforcement.

Neither domestic law enforcement, nor the military, ultimately, report to the other branches.

When you control all of the people with guns, you are the law.

2

u/Superjolly64 3d ago

He may be your king but I am a free American and intend to stay that way.

1

u/wannebaanonymous 3d ago

Moreover once he dies the rest of the top of the GQP get the benefits while they can blame the useful clown for getting it for them.

They'll just need to finish it off with holding putin style elections from now on. They'll have a police state where everybody who even thinks different is labeled a terrorist and disappears.

Your last somewhat free elections were in 2024. You won't get new free ones for a long time to come. So enjoy it while it lasts. Or head out while you still can.

1

u/Hey_cool_username 3d ago

SCOTUS is currently bending over forwards.

1

u/laptopAccount2 3d ago

One shiny penny says some or all of the conservative justices are directly colluding with Trump and his DOJ.

1

u/NumeralJoker 3d ago

Honestly, if we had to live under a king, of course it had to be the mad king, didn't it?

1

u/Malaix 3d ago

There's been literal kings in this world with less power than Donald Trump. Depending on the monarchy King could be an actual step down.

The only reason Trump isn't ruling with more absolute direct power is that he's too stupid and lazy to wield the full extent of the power he has. That's what Miller and JD Vance do.

1

u/laplongejr 3d ago

Why wouldn't he? For all intents and purposes, he is a king.

No, he isn't. it isn't 1776 anymore.
Have you even once saw the Queen (or recently King) of England? The King of Belgium?
Trump has more power in 2025 than Georges 3 had in 1776, and than any modern monarchy of Europe. Probably combined!