Trump- new storm and coup in the future?
Trump is still alive and very active. He is touring the USA, travels to the Mexican border, is participating in party congresses of the Republican party, demanding 10 trillion dollar compensation from China for the “China virus”, intimidating unloyal Republicans and tries to improve his options to run as presidential candidate for the Republicans in 2024 again. Meanwhile the Biden administration tries to get rid of Trump by legal procedures and maybe Trump gets imprisoned or a penalty. However, it is unlikely that Trump will capitulate without resistance and violence. A likely scenario is presented in a comment by Gwynne Dyer in the Bangkok Post:
“Today it’s Zuma, tomorrow it could be Trump
17 Jul 2021
Sooner or later ex-president Donald Trump is bound to be indicted for some crime. It doesn’t matter which — it could be a fraud or corruption charge, or a sexual offence, or incitement to violence, or even just tax evasion. (That’s what finally got American gangster Al Capone.) And it doesn’t matter whether he’s convicted, either; the real drama will come before that.
We have all been exposed to his rampaging id, and by now his actions are fairly predictable. In particular, we know that his standard response to any legal problem is to rage that it is yet another „witch-hunt“, and hire whichever lawyers will still work for him to get the charges dismissed or at least indefinitely delayed.
Under no circumstances will Mr Trump tamely show up in court to fight his case, agreeing to testify under oath. He has given too many hostages to fortune, and once that process gets underway his ultimate destination is probably huge fines and/or prison. So he must find another way to respond.
We have a very recent example of what a ruthless, trapped ex-president will do to avoid that fate. Jacob Zuma was president of South Africa for nine years, and his behaviour in power gave the world a new phrase: „state capture“. His friends and business partners prospered mightily, and their activities cost South Africa an estimated US$83 billion (2.7 trillion baht).
Zuma has also faced rape charges, and is currently dealing with 16 criminal charges of fraud, racketeering and money laundering. Or rather not dealing with them: he has repeatedly refused to appear in court and answer the charges. Eventually, South Africa’s Constitutional Court sentenced him to 15 months in jail for contempt of court.
Zuma duly handed himself in a week ago and is now in jail, but he knew what would happen next and was counting on it to free him of all his legal troubles. And it did happen: the parts of South Africa where there are large populations of Zulus, Zuma’s own tribe, exploded into violence.
In KwaZulu-Natal, the Zulu homeland, and in South Africa’s biggest urban area, the Johannesburg region, there were violent mass protests demanding his release (almost exclusively Zulu), which morphed into mass looting (any thug can join). Approximately 200 supermarkets and many other businesses have been pillaged and burned, and 75 people are dead. One thousand seven hundred people have been arrested.
Zuma’s game was clearly to frighten the South African government into dropping all the charges, and it might have worked. In a country of minorities, Zulus are the biggest minority (22%), and feel historically entitled because of their past military dominance. A lot of them did come out on the streets for him.
But President Cyril Ramaphosa (who was born into the smallest and most innocuous tribe, the Venda) put the army on the streets and faced him down. The riots have ended except in KwaZulu-Natal, and are now dwindling in size and number even there. Zuma’s future does not look bright.
Now, what has all this to do with Donald Trump? Quite a lot, because he has made himself the figurehead and alleged champion of the interests of the biggest American minority, the non-metropolitan whites of the United States.
They make up about 30% of the US population, they are angry and frightened about their gradual descent into being just one interest group among many, and a significant proportion of them are prepared to follow Mr Trump anywhere. They willingly ignore all his sexual and financial peccadilloes and they have even swallowed the Big Lie: that he really won the 2020 election.
The mills of American justice grind even more slowly than those of the South African courts, but the time is coming when Mr Trump will be charged with a serious offence in one of the several domains where he is highly vulnerable. Will the former president tamely submit to the judgements of the court? Of course not.
He will do a Zuma, stringing it out as long as possible and then finally resorting to an attempt to overawe the American state and constitution by violence in the streets. He has done that once already, and he will certainly do it again if his freedom or even just his fortune is at stake.
Excitable pundits talk about a second American civil war, and it’s true that Mr Trump could persuade hundreds or even thousands of Americans to kill and die for him. But Mr Trump’s first tentative use of this strategy failed on 6 Jan, and Zuma’s resort to similar tactics is currently failing before our eyes.
A last-ditch Trump attempt to terrorise the courts into submission is also almost bound to fail — but that doesn’t mean he will not try it.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2150283/today-its-zuma-tomorrow-it-could-be-trump
While Trump tries to strengthen his former supporter base after the storm on Capitol Hill, his former national security adviser and former General Michael Flynn even called for a military coup for Trump´s „stolen election victory“.Latest reports and another new book also give an insight in the former Trump administration , its Iran policy and the role of US Chief of Staff US general Mike Milley- the Jerusalem Post reports:
“Netanyahu urged Trump to strike Iran after election loss – New Yorker
General Mark Milley warned against carrying out a military action against Iran, despite countless others urging the president to strike.
By Jerusalem Post Staff, Reuters
July 17, 2021 10:36
Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to persuade former US president Donald Trump to carry out a military strike on Iran, according to Susan B. Glasser of The New Yorker in a report released on Thursday.
General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, urged against the Iran strike, warning Trump that, “if you do this, you’re gonna have a f***ing war,“ according to the report.
This came months after Trump lost the 2020 election, with him allegedly desperate to stay in power. Milley, who has previously warned about Israeli-Palestinian escalations having large-scale consequences, believed that Trump did not actually want a war, but kept pushing for a missile strike in response to various provocations, including from Netanyahu, according to The New Yorker.
„Trump had a circle of Iran hawks around him and was close with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was also urging the Administration to act against Iran after it was clear that Trump had lost the election,“ the report noted.
Like Netanyahu, Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo and vice president Mike Pence also reportedly pushed for action against Iran, Pence saying it was „because they are evil.“
Netanyahu and Trump held a longstanding relationship while they were in office, frequently agreeing on issues surrounding Iran.
On January 3, after his Christmas vacation, Trump convened a meeting in the Oval Office about Iran, asking his advisers about recent reports on Tehran’s nuclear activity. He was told it was not possible to do anything militarily, considering the costs and consequences.
The president eventually agreed to let go of the idea, according to the report.
Trump slammed Milley on Thursday after allegations in a new book that senior uniformed military leaders were deeply concerned about the potential for a coup after the November election and had discussed a plan to resign.
According to excerpts obtained by CNN from the upcoming book I Alone Can Fix It, written by two Washington Post journalists, Milley and other senior US military leaders discussed resigning in the event they received orders they considered illegal or dangerous.
„I never threatened, or spoke about – to anyone – a coup of our government,“ Trump said in a statement. „If I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is General Mark Milley.“
US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, had privately acknowledged concerns that Trump might attempt to draw in the military to quash dissent, as fears about Trump’s potential misuse of the Insurrection Act mounted.
A planned, orderly resignation by the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had not been previously reported.
Interesting insights into the Trump administration at the time and the role of US-General Milley. In terms of foreign policy, Milley seems to be more of a dove and warned of military strikes against Iran, as he does not present China’s dangerousness as being so acute. However it seems that he and most US militaryies wouldn´t have actively acted against Trump in the event of a coup attempt in the USA, but only threatened to resign, passively boycott a coup attempt, which in the case of a renewed attempt by Trump and his supporters let remain only the hope that such a attempt would fail because of lacking support within the military and a broad democratic mass movement. Not exactly reassuring. However it leaves a potential space for such an attempt and reminds a little bit of German General Seeckt´s saying during the Kapp coup in the Weimar Republc: “ Troops don´t shot at troops” (German: Truppe schießt nicht auf Truppe). If the democratic parts of the military refrain from acting, it might leave the decision to the strength of the civilian democratic supporter, a general strike, civil disobedience or whatever to prevent a second coup attempt..