Other sources without paywall:
https://newrepublic.com/post/188338/trump-executive-order-military-board-purge
More than anything else I’ve heard, this Trump action scares me the most.
Military generals recognize the president as commander in chief. They’re generally going to follow the chain of command in situations where the US is attacking a strategic target, regardless of the ‘ethics’ of the situation.
If Trump wants to level the Gaza Strip or the West Bank or even parts of the Ukraine. They’ll likely follow orders because there’s a strategic value in those targets militarily. They might not agree with the strategy, but they’re primarily loyal to the office of the president regardless of who’s sitting in it.
But when generals would push back, is any scenario where following orders was a risk to the country with no strategic gain. Like attacking US citizens, using nuclear weapons, attacking strategic allies or starting World War III for no other reason than because Trump wanted to flex his ego.
The scenarios where these roles needed to be replaced by a Trump loyalist willing to do anything are… nightmarish.
This is the move Trump needs to make if he wants to become a true dictator. You need the military protecting you from the populace if you’re going to consolidate absolute power. If he starts purging the military brass, that’s a confirmation that he’s planning to be president for life.
He’s not getting rid of them though, because he’s a maroon (thank god). He’s just pissing them off and giving them more free time.
He is clearly Orange not Maroon
Please create beef with the military.
If Trump were smart, he’d play the long game at this point. He’s won. Install friendly sycophants in charge of all the elections, keep stuffing the Supreme Court, and depend on the lock on power created by that and the current electoral trifecta to consolidate all his power. Keep the Democrats around as a puppet opposition to siphon off any energy from a genuine resistance, and live out the rest of his days as a king without creating any massive upset that can go sideways on him.
Trump isn’t smart. He wants to create massive disruptions in civil society, for reasons of his own, and now he wants to commit the classic bloodless-coup-er’s mistake of firing a bunch of military people so they’re left wandering loose in civil society, still with all their connections and skills and respect in place, available to be slotted into a resistance against him if it goes beyond a certain point, in which role they can transform it from a laughable potshot-bunch into a modern fighting military. And, ensuring loyalty by randomly punishing people who are judged to be disloyal makes everyone disloyal. They just won’t be disloyal to your face.
I’m not saying this definitely won’t work. But tangling with the military at this stage introduces what they call a critical success factor into his plan. Again, for no reason. The military isn’t going to get involved if he only usurps society on the civilian side.
Edit: Typo
See. If he’s just wanting to fire people out of spite - I don’t care.
But I feel he may want to stuff generals with his hires to then just invoke a martial law and execute a coup.
That’s absolutely what he’s trying to do. My point is that the US military doesn’t operate like Toys-R-Us or Twitter or whatever. You can’t just fire the boss of the division, bring in a new guy who says we’re going to go shoot some protestors now, and have all the battalion commanders under them say, “Oh, okay, that’s weird but w/e.”
At least, I hope not. I’m pretty sure though. It’s not simple like Trump is thinking, and he doesn’t have the level of understanding to pull it off and make it work.
Remember this? Listen to them cheering:
Doing it over years, replacing leadership at different levels at different intervals, starting at day 1, then everyone 8-12 months thereafter, until You reach year four… will mean they the leaders you’ve instilled across the formation will all be prepped and on the same page when you throw the coup at year 4.
That’s why they’re starting now, not 2027 or 2028.
You’re still assuming a lot, namely that friendly faces replace the fired ones. And that lower echelons obey orders of a captured higher echelon.
The military is really very resistant to this kind of thing. We have leadership right down to 4 person teams.
I think it’s safe to assume that if you can control promotions you’ll promote those who better fit your ideology. And if you also implement a ‘red scare’ labeling and removing anyone who holds different ideologies than yours… all that will be left are those willing to obey what would have been illegal orders, and those that believe your orders aren’t illegal.
Edit: remember, they only just removed DA photos from the SRB, because they had a problem with promotions going to people who ‘looked like military leaders’ which was very heavily favoring ‘strong white men’.
A roll back of policies like that, reimplementing things like ‘Don’t ask, Don’t tell’, labeling progressives or democrats as socialists or commies, labeling non-religious people similarly as non-American, discriminating against minorities again and labeling them as others… also, don’t forget that 1 member of Congress held up our top promotions for how many months?.. due to his personal belief about abortion rights? The ground work is already being laid.
‘Woke policies are weakening our military!’ ‘Women don’t belong in combat fields!’ ‘Permitting trans and gays in the military made us the laughing stock of the world!’ ‘Roll back woke mandates in the military!’… feels like an easy path to follow, there.
“Hegseth’s choice could bring sweeping changes to the military, as he has made it clear on his show and in interviews that, like Trump, he is stridently opposed to “woke” programs that promote equity and inclusion. He’s also questioned the role of women in combat and advocated pardoning service members charged with war crimes.”
Here we go!
I’m not saying they can’t fuck up a lot of things. But at a certain point there’s too many promotions to control. This has always been an Authoritarian problem, and is why you see dictators with “Republican Guards”. Those units get all the good equipment, training, and are highly controlled for loyalty.
Creating something like that takes years though. And will transparently be the end of any claim to be the better party for our military. So in 2026/28 elections will be much harder.
Also I cant imagine the military higher ups are particularly fond of Trump anyways, they could very well use this action as a casus belli to trigger a civil war. Which would just be a repeat of the last one more or less. Really that one would come down to how stupid Trump and Co are.
Edit: I just remembered 2025 calls for getting rid of Veterans Affairs, so not only do the big wigs probably hate Trump the rank and file have plenty of reasons too.
It’s also relevant that 100% of the troops that are permitted to operate inside the US are under the control of the individual states. You could say that Trump can just install loyalists and deploy the real federal army inside the US, but I cannot possibly imagine that they would obey orders to fight domestically against the National Guard.
The founders of the US did some things wrong, but they also had some pretty solid foresight about some things.
Edit: I can’t type
The national guard previously state militia system is honestly kinda brilliant, in how it allows some amount of military counter actions by the states themselves. I suspect it is based off of how some Italian city states would have local semi-professional militaries for local defense while relying on mercenaries for external actions.
There’s a reason Stalin killed or imprisoned the officers he purged.
Isnt their some law about the simple explanation is most likly the real one?
Wouldnt the simple explanation be he wants different generals and he doesnt care what they do cos he plans on stepping dpwn in 4 years.
Seems like the potential loss of a lot of valuable experience for the US military…
Seems like a potential win for the likes of Americas adversaries… Useful idiot does useful idiot stuff…
Bet the “art of the deal” douche isn’t even getting anything from them, he’s just doing the “I want the types of generals Hitler had” thing for himself…
We’re all Russians now, in the american clown show.
Paywall, didn’t read.
Also, I don’t want to support Jeff Bezos.
That’s the Washington Post, this one is Rupert Murdoch. Who you also shouldn’t support.
I mixed them up, you are correct in both.
Just use bypass paywall clean extension for Firefox.
Or just post a link that has the paywall removed since you’re the OP.
I don’t know how. It’s wsj exclusive noone else has it yet.
