Public Comment
The End of Trump or the End of America?
During Donald Trump's recent photo-op stop in California, I heard a radio reporter use the phrase "the president's motorcade." Suddenly, a chill raced down my spine. That phrase—forever associated with President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas—prompted an ominous scenario to take shape in my mind. Here's how it goes.
Donald Trump has become such a self-destructive political figure that his lies, flip-flops, insults, tirades, and frequently incoherent babbling have become a toxic burden that's weighing down the Republican Party—and rattling the billionaire oligarchs who fund the GOP.
Looking at Trump's increasingly erratic behavior (and a seemingly endless parade of pre-election book-length exposes) even some former Ever-Trumpers are left with the feeling that Trump's most effective challenger is . . .Trump himself.
The take-away: Pro-Trump Republicans—and even members of Trump's red-white-and-blue Base—are increasingly concerned about the election outcome. And, if Trump can no longer con his masses, some desperate plotters may determine that he might be "better off dead." (More on this later.)
What If Trump Loses and Refuses to Leave?
America faces a fundamental problem in the upcoming election: We are not a democracy.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton won by 3 million popular votes but it was Trump who took home the Electoral College diploma. This year, the Boston Globe recently predicted, Joe Biden could bypass Trump by 7 million votes and still lose to The Donald in the Electoral College.
Trump has indicated that he might not leave office if he looses the election. Roger Stone (a convicted criminal pardoned by Trump) has openly urged the President to declare "martial law," if he fails to win in November.
Trump has warned that, in the event of election chaos, he will meet any popular "insurrection" with deadly military force. Trump has even applauded the extralegal murder of his opponents, calling the police killing of an Antifa shooting suspect a case of justifiable "retribution."
When Trump was asked directly by Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace whether if would step down should he lose the November election, Trump replied: "I have to see, look, I have to see, I'm not just going to say yes, I'm not going to say no." (During the 2016 campaign, when Trump was asked if he would abide by the voters' will, he responded that he would "keep you in suspense.")
Retired Military Leaders Support Trump's Removal
Appalled by Trump's despotic intimations, two respected retired Army Officers—Col. Paul Yingling and Lt. Col. John Nagi co-authored an article in the military journal Defense One appealing to Gen. Mark Milley, Chair of the Joint Chiefs, to be prepared to order the military to remove Trump from office should he try to delay, disrupt, cancel or simply ignore the results of the November 3 election. Yingling was clear: "A president who defies a Constitutional succession of power might be guilty of treason."
Yingling and Nagi were not the first to suggest this unprecedented remedy. On June 10, during an appearance on The Daily Show, Joe Biden assured host Trevor Noah that, if Trump attempted to "steal" the election, the military—as sworn guardians of the Constitution—would escort him out of the White House "with great dispatch."
War-gaming the Election Aftermath
The various scenarios have become so dire, that late last year, a group of 70 former government officials and retired military officers assembled to conduct a "war games" exercise to explore possible responses should Trump attempt to seize power. The so-called "Transition Integrity Project" (TIP) was comprised of Democrats and Republicans. It split into seven competing groups that considered four possible outcomes—a Biden blowout, a narrow Biden win, a Trump win, and an uncertain outcome.
The results of the experiment were published in August. The progressive Indivisible Project reviewed three predicted outcomes.
- Trump loses by a significant margin but refuses to leave office.
- It is a close election and, with mail-in ballots slow to arrive, the final results will not be known for days or weeks. Trump will immediately declare victory, insisting that attempts to record uncounted ballots would be proof of a "rigged" system.
- Trump triggers a Constitutional crisis that would be addressed by courts packed with Trump-picked jurors. At this point, the TIP gamers concluded, the only recourse for Trump's critics would be to respond with "a show of numbers in the streets."
The Sad End of Donald Trump
This brings me back to that chill I felt upon hearing the phrase, "presidential motorcade."
There may be an alternative that would avoid unleashing a Civil War/Race War in the streets of America.
The quick-and-easy solution? Trump must go. Most likely via a shocking, pre-election assassination.
It could be politically useful (but not in any way necessary) for Those In Power to blame Trump's demise on "Antifa" elements or "Socialist Democrats" but it will suffice just to have Trump removed from the scene, thereby allowing Mike Pence to step forward and assert "emergency powers" to claim Republican control of the Republic.
A presidential assassination would not be an uncommon event in US history. There's a good chance the US has lost more leaders to assassins than any other modern nation. You could say assassinations have become "as American as apple pie." Four sitting US presidents have fallen victim to assassins, including: Abraham Lincoln, James Abram Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy. (Not on the list: Warren G. Harding, a notorious philanderer who some believe was poisoned by his wife while he was facing impeachment for corruption.)
Seventeen US presidents (including all 12 of our most recent leaders) have been the victims of attempted assassinations including: Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.
Fifteen Congressmen have been killed in office—10 Democrats, four Republicans, and one Democratic-Republican.
Assassins have murdered numerous progressive activists including: Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Harvey Milk, George Moscone, and Liberal radio host Alan Berg (murdered by white supremacists in 1984).
Trump has already been the target of three assassination attempts. In 2016, a British citizen named Michael Sandford grabbed a police officer's pistol at a Las Vegas campaign rally and tried to shoot candidate Trump. In 2017, a member of the Islamic State of Iraq was arrested by Philippine National Police and charged with plotting to murder Trump during his visit to an ASEAN summit. In 2018, Trump was targeted by a US Navy vet named William Clyde Allen III who mailed poison-laced letters to the White House.
Salon-founder David Talbot has written extensively about the JFK assassination. His book, The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government, offers compelling evidence that Kennedy was the victim of a well-orchestrated government coup engineered by CIA Director Allan Dulles.
In a letter posted on Facebook and widely shared, Talbot begins by asking the question: "Why was Kennedy assassinated by his own national security forces but Donald Trump has so far not been?" After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy challenged the intelligence community and threatened to dismantle the CIA and cast the pieces to the winds. Trump has also railed at the powerful and secretive intelligence community—aka the "Deep State."
Two things have saved Trump, Talbot believes. First, there is no longer a single, powerful master at the head of Trump's Deep State foes—no Allan Dulles. Second, despite his derogatory swipes at the leadership in the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA and the rest of the vast intelligence empire, Trump still glorifies militarism and is committed to promoting wars and the military sales propagated by endless conflict. "So, no matter how he blows off steam on Twitter," Talbot concludes, "there are significant factions within the deep state that are still cheering him on, or that at least find him a useful idiot."
The Secret Service Targets Trump
In a September 20, 2016 article in The Berkeley Daily Planet, I wrote about a disturbing report aired by the CBS Evening News. The report was aired while Barack Obama was still in the White House. Here are some excerpts:
"Reporting on the extensive efforts taken to protect the president, CBS's Margaret Brennan explained how members of the Secret Service's elite counter-sniper team 'are trained to hit targets dead on and, in the worst case scenario, put themselves in the line of fire.'
"In Brennan's report—titled "Inside the Secret Service sniper team"—government snipers were shown polishing their skills at a private government shooting range.
Instead of aiming their powerful long-range rifles at a generic black silhouette, however, the snipers in the CBS report were shown shooting at an identifiable human face—in this case, a cropped photo of a white, blond-haired male.
"The Secret Service snipers' target bore an uncanny resemblance to presidential candidate Donald Trump." [Note: You can see the image at the Planet link.]
The article also noted another disturbing element of the CBS report: "the government snipers appear to be aiming most of their fire not at the source of a 'would-be assassin's' high-rise window, but at the line of cars in a mock presidential motorcade."
Snipers are neither "protective" nor "defensive." Their mission is to kill specific targets invisibly, at a great distance.
[Note: CBS never responded to requests to address the identity of the individual who's face was posted on the Secret Service's targets.]
How an Assassination Could 'Bring the Country Together'
If (God forbid) Trump were to become the victim of political violence, many voters would respond by closing ranks around Vice President Mike Pence, the new GOP candidate, in a show of political—and national—solidarity. This "rally 'round the flag" effect would not benefit the Democrats. All sympathy would gravitate toward the White House and the images of grieving family members.
Under the vale of "victim sympathy," Republicans—and, potentially, many Democrats—would rush to put "nation before party," closing ranks under the flag of "national sorrow" and "national unity."
A Trump assassination would not help Joe Biden's campaign. In the wake of such a shattering national calamity, the "herd instinct" would most likely drive a majority of voters to demonstrate their patriotism by mourning Trump (for all his sins and failures) as the embodiment of "the presidency." An attack on Trump would be seen as akin to an attack on the nation itself.
Rallying around Pence and Trump's grieving family could be spun as "standing up to terrorism"—while serving to defend and promote the agendas of the GOP.
While forfeiting the election in the name of "stability" would mean submitting to the "status quo" politics of the previous four years, this grievous outcome might well be preferable to the alternative—the outbreak of a deadly, suicidal Civil War driven by internal divisions of race, religion, and resentment.
Imagine if, in addition to losing entire towns to climate-change-fueled wildfires, tornados, and hurricanes, and losing millions of lives to Covid-19, our cities would to erupt spiraling pandemics of citizen-on-citizen violence. This could unleash a reign of looting, shooting, and polluting that would signal the end of the American Experiment.
This Just In . . .
Or, as investigative journalist Greg Palast speculates, Trump's total seizure of power could be achieved by leveraging right-wing attacks on voting stations and US Post Offices to the point that even holding an election becomes untenable.
If GOP-controlled Florida, Milwaukee, and Michigan claim the chaos makes it impossible for them to conduct elections or count the ballots, Team Trump would be free to invoke the Constitution's 12th Amendment. That would mean the next president would be elected by the House of Representatives—on the basis of a single vote cast by each of the country's 50 states. Palast explains this in greater detail below:
PS: One of my motives for writing this long exercise in political projection is the hope that, by speculating on the possibility of another shocking example of "executive action," it might actually prevent such a scenario from occurring.
