Why did Trump purge civilian leadership at the Pentagon? Updated July 2021 The heroism of Gen. Milley

Update: July 2021 from November 2020 posts

New book reveals what was going on in the Pentagon as generals feared a coup after November 2021 General Milley is emerging as a hero who saw a repeat of a Nazi style takeover and who saved democracy . New book shows top US generals planned ways to stop Trump in case of coup - YouTube 

This explains why beginning Nov. 2020 the Pentagon issued statements regarding Trump's intent to use the military to keep power.  Trump's attempted to seize control of the military by replacing as many in the Pentagon he could with political loyalsts.  January 6 could be seen as an attempted coup by the non military. That one also failed.  Democracy prevailed.

 Below is a commentary in my posts during the fall 2020 period.  

Why did Trump purge civilian leadership at the Pentagon? There is a great deal of speculation about why Trump did that. The most disturbing was the speculation that Trump fired Esper because he intended to use the active military to put down demonstrations against him post-election... calling it an "insurrection".

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-pentagon-trump/after-esper-firing-white-house-moves-trump-loyalists-into-key-pentagon-jobs-idUSKBN27Q3F6

My observation: Joint Chiefs, in the wake of this summer's demonstration from Lafayette Square to those on the west coast, had made it clear they would not intervene in domestic political affairs. https://www.axios.com/milley-military-election-trump-biden-7b448425-07c0-4c43-b03b-96ba8d741f84.html :

Later October 11, https://www.npr.org/transcripts/922827554

Per Gen. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs:"“I believe deeply in the principle of an apolitical U.S. military,” Milley said in written responses to questions from two Democratic members of the House Armed Services Committee, according to AP.

• “In the event of a dispute over some aspect of the elections, by law U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress are required to resolve any disputes, not the U.S. military. I foresee no role for the U.S armed forces in this process.”
• When asked whether the armed forces would reject a presidential order to use military force for political gain, Milley said, “I will not follow an unlawful order.”

The big picture: This marks the second time that Milley has recently stressed the nonpartisan nature of the U.S. military.

• He apologized in June for attending Trump's photo op at St. John's Episcopal Church, saying, "I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military VWell, I've reminded people of that for years, you know, for four years as the chief of staff of the Army and in many years before that during reenlistment ceremonies, promotion ceremonies. I always talk about the Constitution and its importance to us as a military in that we - of all the countries in the world, I think that we are the only one - or at least one of the very few - that swears an oath of allegiance to an idea that's embedded in a document called the U.S. Constitution. We don't swear an oath of allegiance to an individual, a king, a queen, a president or anything else ....We don't swear an oath of allegiance to a country, for that matter. We don't swear an oath of allegiance to a flag, a tribe or religion or any of that. We swear an oath to an idea or a set of ideas and values that are embedded in our Constitution. And we, the U.S. military, are willing to die for - to preserve those ideas and values. And we're willing to die in order to preserve them and pass them onto the next generation. So - and they're all in the Constitution. They're all fundamental to the Constitution."
• October 11, 2020, interview on NPR  https://www.npr.org/transcripts/922827554 ""This isn't the first time that someone has suggested that there might be a contested election," Milley said. "And if there is, it'll be handled appropriately by the courts and by the U.S. Congress. There's no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of a U.S. election. Zero. There is no role there."

That Joint Chief declarations also is relevant to the question of whether Trump could stage a coup. Answer: No so long as Gen. Milley has a say.. In the next 70 days, this aspiring autocrat of a President is taking revenge on the disloyal and may even try to start a war against Iran (for intervening against him in the elections), though I cannot imagine a Pentagon able to make such preparations for such an attack on such short notice, except for a bombing run. Removal of troops from Afghanistan is more likely, those our allies there say it would be turning the country over to the Taliban. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/10/08/taliban-cheer-trump-tweet-promising-early-us-troop-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/ That he as put incompetent and Muslimphobes in key positions in the civilian control positions of the military is unnerving if any of this is on his agenda. The most benign reason might be incriminating document destruction.

The "insurrection" rationale depends upon whether Trump believes he is the state and demonstrations against him is an insurrection. The oath of office military take is allegiance to the Consitution and they do not have to obey illegal orders. From my Sept. 8 blog post: Can the president invoke the insurrection act to force the active military to put down post-election demonstrations? President Trump recently called for that. This apprentice dictator had better be able to tell the difference between protest riots and insurrection because the difference is already established case law. If he has fantasies of a military coup to keep him in office, he may be asking the military to commit an illegal act to overturn a constituted government. Ironically,  what is possible is that the insurrection act could be applied to organized militias and established right-wing terrorist groups who would foment violence if Donald Trump lost and tried to stage a "coup".  That would turn supporters of right-wing advocates calling for insurrection on its head, making them vulnerable to being charged with insurrection instead of left-wing demonstrators. Advocates of invoking the insurrection act ought to be careful what they wish. Riots and peaceful protests are not the same as acts of insurrections that could justify active military intervention per https://definitions.uslegal.com / "insurrection refers to an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government. It is a violent revolt against an oppressive authority. Insurrection is different from riots and offenses connected with mob violence. In insurrection, there is an organized and armed uprising against authority or operations of government whereas riots and offenses connected with mob violence are simply unlawful acts in disturbance of the peace which do not threaten the stability of the government or the existence of political society. The following is a case law defining Insurrection: Insurrection means “a violent uprising by a group or movement acting for the specific purpose of overthrowing the constituted government and seizing its powers. An insurrection occurs where a movement acts to overthrow the constituted government and to take possession of its inherent powers.” [Younis Bros. & Co. v. Cigna Worldwide Ins. Co., 899 F. Supp. 1385, 1392-1393 (E.D. Pa. 1995)]" I note proven or unproven claims of voter fraud are not cited as a justification for an insurrection in the definition. 

Portland, OR incident defines Trump's meaning of law and order that should scare those believing in democracy

Blog column July 18, 2020
Per media reports July 17, Trump ordered federal agents to Portland, OR, battle gear bedecked like figures in computerized war games. They were  "reportedly pulling protestors into unmarked vehicles" and firing rubber bullets into crowds of protestors  https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/07/17/trump-ordered-federal-agents-are-reportedly-pulling-protesters-into-unmarked-vehicles-drawing-outrage/

If Trump is planning to hitch his campaign wagon to his law and order plank, claiming under Biden there will be more strife on the urban streets because of defunding police, he will have a major handicap: Not only do people know Biden for his track record of service over 40 years, he was the first to come out opposing defunding police when the phrase "defunding police" was uttered by some on the left. If anything, Biden has come under fire from the more radical elements of the Democratic Party for supporting some law and order legislation in the past.

 In fact, to make the point Trump's advertising tries to highlight, that there is anarchy in the urban streets, as he calls peaceful protesters exercising their first amendment rights, he has drawn on film footage that has taken place under his own administration. One ad even drew three-year-old footage of pro-democracy protesters in Ukraine.  His proposal to deal with demonstrating opposition is to flood streets with thousands of his secret police troops armed for battle in Afghanistan,  just as he did in Portland.  His proposal to snuff out peaceful demonstrations with Gestapo like action would end democracy as we know it. His love of the tactics of dictators should set up alarm bells. Among his bag of tricks are some actions he already supports,  including suppression of minority voting, using his power of licensing and intimidation to destroy freedom of the press. He would be .turning  us into an authoritarian dictatorship aping the fascists of yore and modern dictators like Putin and Erdogan.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/trump-putting-show-portland/614521/ "The president is deploying the kind of performative authoritarianism that Vladimir Putin pioneered."

MADE FOR TV AND CAMPAIGN ADS

Once again, Trump defines his meaning of law and order by giving a visual example what we can expect if he gets a second term. It should scare the heck out of those who still believe in democracy.
July 22, 2020: Welcome to Germany early 1930's. The same tactic Hitler used to rise to power. Create and stage the street protests to scare the crap out of the less than sophisticated citizens as his campaign ads feature his federal agents confronting Portland peaceful demonstrators. .https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/us/politics/trump-portland-federal-agents.html
However,, Ad Week reports that the picture used to illustrate the out of control Portland was 6 years old taken in Ukraine.  https://www.adweek.com/creativity/trump-ad-about-chaos-in-u-s-actually-used-footage-from-pro-democracy-rally-in-ukraine/

Democracy as I define it is a specific kind:  We have seen before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dictatorships and totalitarian control by those from the extreme left, the Communists following at worst the Stalinist model.  They were likewise as damaging to humanity and human rights as were the fascists that rose in the 1930s and met their demise in World War II.  Fascism and Communist dictators are not the only alternatives to governance. , There is a form of democracy embraced by the founders of America and post World War II Europe that provides the third way of humane governance we have enjoyed until now.  Most attempts at our kind of democracy have met totalitarianism and dictatorships and the supporters of democracy failed to stop their takeover, by forms of totalitarianism and dictatorships, kings, and tyrants from early Greece and Rome to more modern eras. Our democracy is 250 years old, and only with the grace of those dedicated to democracy of both political parties stand in the way of its demise. Small d democracy calls for allegiance to the rule of law instead of the rule of a person, with the law formed by a freely elected representative government, protecting freedom of the press, the right to peacefully assemble to present grievances, and other  protections included  among  all those civil rights  addressed in the First Amendment

Additional comment: July 21, 2020: The first act I took after the election of Donald Trump was to become a monthly contributor to the ACLU. I feared what I saw of him during the campaign that he had no respect for freedom of the press or the right to peacefully assemble and protest. His intimidation of journalists who asked the hard questions and his use of his private army of paramilitary to dominate the streets and suppress peaceful demonstrators in Lafayette Square and Portland, his racism, and praise of armed militia and neo-Nazis, have more than justified my action. His action and words in these three and a half years have validated my fears that civil liberties would be his prime target to get around, ignore, and damage, the most endangered species in .our democracy.
https://www.opb.org/news/article/federal-law-enforcement-unmarked-vehicles-portland-protesters/

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-comment-federal-response-portland-protests

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/18/end-unconstitutional-nightmare-aclu-sues-trump-administration-over-use-secret-police

Continuation of the July 18 blog column:
 In Portland Trump duplicated the same kinds of forces and techniques that he used to clear Lafayette Square in Washington, DC, of peaceful demonstrators. In face of generals refusing to allow the active military to clear the streets in the George Floyd demonstrations,  he tried another end-run around them using unbadged military types trained and pulled from various federal agencies picked to do his bidding. In this Portland incident, he used his authority under the legalistic guise of "protecting federal property".  Since some of these troops were positioned away from federal property, it appeared they were also there to intimidate the protestors. A young white man armed with a boom box held high was shot in the head by a rubber bullet cracking his skull. The victim was nowhere near federal property...nor was he a threat. His weapon was a boom box amplified broadcast,  ye gads. It was all caught on cell phone video, including snatching demonstrators and whisking them away in rented unmarked vehicles.  Nearly every civil rights and a couple of laws you could name, or the restraints courts had ordered local police to observe,  were violated by these military-style and trained Federales (a term I applied to federal police used by tin-pot Latin American dictators to quell the masses), but the best term more applicable came from the mouth of Sen.Ron Wyden (Dem, OR): "storm troopers".   That one has roots in Hitler's rise to power and similar techniques he used to consolidate his power.  Kidnapping, holding without charges, and manhandling have been used in recent times by Putin in Russia and China., particularly recently in Hong Kong. Using federally ordered thugs in military gear and secret police are common techniques used by historical and modern dictators to subdue opposition.   What was peculiar about this incident in Portland, the intimidating actions by stormtroopers, was that it was apparently staged for the benefit of FOX and covered only by Trump's loyal media.at first,..but several days later, July 17, the outrage of the Oregon governor and the Portland Mayor and the emergence of videos of weapons firing seriously injuring someone and military types throwing demonstrators into unmarked cars brought it to mainstream media.  Both state and local officials had worked hard to keep the demonstrations peaceful and their concern was that such action would only bring more hardcore protestors to the scene, ready themselves to do violent battle with the stormtroopers.

The purpose of this exercise was political, it appears since the incident coverage was engineered by  Trump media.  This is an indication that the purpose was to keep the favor of the cult-like followers of Trump, to whom the concept of democracy and civil rights seems to be considered a barrier to Trump's power rather than as some ideal worthy to protect. Trump was faced with polling showing his approval ratings had dropped to the high 30%  due to his inept handling of the pandemic and the George Floyd protests. Raising the issue of "law and order" certainly served as a diversion of attention from his tanking poll numbers. That he still maintains support for his economic policies,  seems strange, given conditions that echo the Great Depression. For others less devoted to him and disapproving of his handling of the pandemic and race relations, it was the reminder of a tradeoff:. "If you don't like me or what I do in other matters, I will at least keep you safe from those you fear and hate". 

This kind of military action certainly appeals to the core of the only group of followers who still had the majority of their demographics favoring him: white men with no college education, per recent polling, and followers of the ideology of some of Trump's ardent advisors: dominate the streets with military and suppress demonstrators, peaceful or not.   It was meant to send a message that Trump's law and Trump's techniques to force order would rule,  but the message it sent to the majority of voters who are now not supportive of him was democracy has no place in Trumpland nor did any respect for civil rights or the rule of law. It was what we could expect in a Trump second term.(For more go to the May 29, 2020 posting: Trump fans the flames of violence, yet calls himself the champion of law and order)