Donald Trump has been given the go-ahead by the Supreme Court’s “presidential immunity” decision to execute many of his threats against Americans who oppose him politically, Retired U.S. Army Major General Randy Manner said in a CNN segment below.
Manner joins numerous Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans who have warned that Trump 2.0 — a second Trump administration presumably following the Project 2025 plan with no “guardrails” attached — would be far more autocratic than the first administration.
Major General Randy Manner explains how Trump is planning to deploy the military against Americans who oppose him: “The Supreme Court has given him immunity… He can use the National Guard almost in any way he wants… We have a fascist running for President of the United… https://t.co/Y1QSPxjuuY pic.twitter.com/v9rQX0f3Z5
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 15, 2024
A major reason for this concern is Trump’s promise to place only MAGA loyalists in top positions: That is, none of the so-called “adults in the room” that Trump now laments held his agenda in check during his first term.
In a second Trump term, out will be the likes of reluctant Trump 1.0 operatives such as former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark A. Milley.
In their place will be seated a potential cabinet of MAGA adherents like Stephen Miller, Steven Bannon and criminally convicted, Trump-pardoned former Lt. General Michael Flynn, all willing to do Trump’s bidding.
Flynn, echoing Trump, says things like: “The people that are in charge of our government right now, they are intentionally trying to destroy our country. These people, they’re not incompetent. They’re not stupid. They’re evil!”
Trump has said recently that those “radical” people — politicians like Democratic California Congressman Adam Schiff — should go to prison for their “crimes” against America. At the same time Trump says he will pardon all of the convicted January 6 rioters, just as he pardoned Flynn.
Foreshadowing his future enemies list, Trump said last week of his Democratic presidential opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris: “She’s a criminal. She’s a criminal. She really is, if you think about it.” It follows that Harris would be prosecuted under Trump 2.0.
Having escaped the rule of a 18th century despot, however, the United States was constitutionally constructed to hinder a president’s ability to unilaterally punish his political opponents in such a manner.
Even with a dearth of “adults in the room” to rein in a tyrannical commander-in-chief, the checks and balances system would prevent the execution of vengeful orders and the use of the Justice Department as a political cudgel. That is, if “adults” are scarce in the Oval Office, there are still other powerful rooms in government — e.g., SCOTUS and the Senate chamber — to counterbalance autocratic leanings.
But those checks and balances — those safeguards for the Republic — were knocked out of whack, Manners says, by the SCOTUS immunity decision, which grants a POTUS immunity for any action taken under his or her “official” duties.
“The threshold for turning the National Guard into his personal police force is quite low,” Manners (a former Acting Vice Chief of the National Guard Bureau) warns in the aftermath of that decision. “Most Americans don’t know how very easy it would be for an unhinged President to use the military against our own citizens.”