A post that Mr. Trump circulated on Sunday called for Liz Cheney to be prosecuted by a military court reserved for enemy combatants and war criminals.
Included in the list of people to be brought up for war crimes against the United States were Current President Joe Biden, Current VP Kamala Harris, former VP Mike Pence, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger and Representatives Adam Schiff, Jamie Raskin, Pete Aguilar, Zoe Lofgren and Bennie Thompson.
Doubtful that the military would actually do that. Trump while President was reportedly annoyed at basically being told ‘no’ that General Kelly said that:
The President may be Commander-in-Chief but the oath is to the Constitution. Obeying the President and officers are also a part of the oath but with the caveat that it is according to the regulations and UCMJ. You not only don’t have to but you’re taught to explicitly not follow an illegal order in the US military.
Not that US military members have given illegal orders that were followed but it is a little different to basically order the military to essentially start enforcing essentially a government coup for a politician against the US’ own citizens.
I mean, I agree with you that most military leaders and soldiers would not do this.
But your own example kind of shows the likely strategy:
What did Hitler do? What did Stalin do?
Fire or banish or kill enough leaders until you get ones that will listen to you, and re orient your troop pools so that you have a decent number of whole units that are ideologically aligned and thus likely to comply.
Trump’s entire modus operandi, now crystalized in extreme detail with Project 2025, has been figure out a way to replace everyone who is not an ideologically aligned stooge willing to literally break existing laws to carry out the whims of the God Emperor, at literally every level of government.
I obviously cannot know that this would be successful or in what timeframe.
I can only look to history for many examples of similar things occuring, and see more and more checked boxes making this more likely.
I’m sure the militaries of many other coup’d countries are told not to follow illegal orders, and I’m also sure that many in our modern military and time would resist, perhaps even violently as Stauffenberg did.
But the trend is looking astonishingly bad.