Donald Trump hasn't even been elected President, but he's already making heads explode. Not just liberal heads, but also those of so-called conservatives.
The latest case of an exploding head is someone named Jamie Kirchick , 33, described as a journalist, writer, and a fellow with the Foreign Policy Initiative - a neo-con think tank.
In his op/ed for The Los Angeles Times yesterday (July 19), " If Trump wins, a coup isn't impossible here in the U.S. ," Kirchick tells us that a coup like the one that recently took place - and failed - in Turkey "would not be unfathomable in this country if Donald Trump were to win the presidency."
Why? Because, in Kirchick's words,
"Trump is the most brazenly authoritarian figure to secure the nomination of a major American political party. He expresses his support for all manner of strongmen, and his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has actually worked for one: former Ukrainian president and Vladimir Putin ally Viktor Yanukovich. [...]
Throughout the campaign, Trump has repeatedly bragged about ordering soldiers to commit war crimes, and has dismissed the possibility that he would face any resistance."
Kirchick then piously intones that what he calls Trump's "Blimpish swagger" won't fly "in a liberal democracy, legally grounded by a written constitution, each branch restrained by separation of powers."
And so, Kirchick fantasizes, if "Trump commanded our military to do something stupid, illegal or irrational. Something so dangerous that it put the lives of Americans and the security of the country at stake," and Trump refuses to back down, the U.S. military would be forced to undertake a coup:
"In that case, our military men and women, who swear to uphold the Constitution and a civilian chain of command, would be forced to choose between obeying the law and serving the wishes of someone who has explicitly expressed his utter lack of respect for it."
Curiously, while Kirchick already anticipates President Trump to violate America's rule of law, he is sanguine about Trump's Democratic rival who had already - and repeatedly - violated U.S. laws by using an unsecured private email server while she was secretary of state to exchange emails that contained highly-classified national security information, as well as names of CIA agents. Kirchick writes:
"Needless to say, such dystopian situations are unimaginable under a President Hillary Clinton, who, whatever her faults, would never contemplate ordering a bombing run or - heaven forbid - a nuclear strike on a country just because its leader slighted her small hands at a summit."
Kirchick then concludes that the only way to avert a military coup in a Trump Administration is if voters stop him from becoming president:
"Trump is not only patently unfit to be president, but a danger to America and the world. Voters must stop him before the military has to."
The Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is a neo-con non-profit think tank in Washington, D.C. From :
"FPI's Board of Directors consists of former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric S. Edelman, Dan Senor, Editor of The Weekly Standard William Kristol and Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Robert Kagan. The latter two were project directors of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century. "
In fact, the Foreign Policy Initiative was co-founded in 2009 by Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol , Dan Senor, and Robert Kagan.
Kirchick also writes for Tablet. In a column on March 14, 2016, titled " Donald Trump Is Turning Me Liberal ," he identifies himself as "gay and Jewish" and hysterically compares Trump to Hitler by calling Trump rallies "Nuremberg-esque".
See also:
