In the Oval Office, Donald Trump and Michael Flynn Discuss Martial Law

By Jack Holmes, Esquire

22 December 20

Seems like we could have seen this coming based on every single thing Donald Trump has said and done in public life.

n November 19, we suggested the president may need to be impeached and removed from office in the lame-duck period on the basis he will never stop trying to steal the election and, even if he fails, that he will do untold damage to the country leading up to January 20. This kind of thing was considered alarmist by the Calm, Savvy Observer crowd, who seem to have been asleep for many years, or who at the very least refuse to see—perhaps as a sort of defense mechanism—what is right in front of them, and who certainly lack imagination with regard to what still may come screaming down the pike. It seems bad, for instance, that the Secretary of the Army just felt compelled to issue a statement declaring the U.S. military won't be doing Coup Things.

It should now be blindingly obvious, and really has been since Donald Trump started yelling that the election would be rigged months before it took place, that he will never concede defeat and acquiesce to an orderly transfer of power. You don't need a PhD to see the president is a degenerate narcissist constitutionally incapable of processing a fresh L, but even putting armchair psychology aside, he simply has never accepted responsibility for anything in his life. He has never even accepted the premise that there are features of observable reality he cannot twist and bend to better serve his interests. Why would he start now, particularly when he believes he and his family face enough legal jeopardy when he's stripped of the protections of the presidency that he's considering leaving a pardon under everyone's seat at Christmas dinner? Nobody ever went broke betting that Donald Trump will attempt the next most deranged and dangerous stunt on the sliding scale of depravity that forms the backbone of his earthly existence, all in ceaseless servitude to his own pathological self-interest. The president, on the other hand, has gone broke many times and never paid the piper.

And so we arrived this weekend at the next mile-marker on the road to ruin. The president descended to the next level of right-wing loony-toon hell and summoned Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office for a meeting of the minds, wherein this cavalcade of traitors to the American republic discussed instituting martial law and seizing voting machines by Executive Order for "investigation." (Let's pause here for the mandatory, if grating question: WHAT IF OBAMA DID ANY OF THIS SHIT? OK, let's move on.) Some are presumably voting machines run by the same two companies currently threatening to sue right-wing media outlets, and possibly Powell, for defamation. This authoritarian spasm would be necessary because Giuliani already failed to convince the Department of Homeland Security to seize the machines. The New York Times reports Trump is eyeing Powell for a special counsel role investigating voter fraud, an idea even Giuliani opposed, but the president is talking about giving a high-level security clearance to a lawyer with whom his campaign just weeks ago severed all ties on the basis that she was a few bulbs short of a chandelier.

But the real cream of the crop is retired Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn, a true American patriot who in 2016 served as senior adviser to an American presidential campaign and transition team while simultaneously on the payroll of the Turkish government. He also pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians, for which, along with "any and all possible offenses" related to the Mueller probe, the American president pardoned him. Now, Flynn is returning the favor by going on one of the TV channels for people who think Fox News is too squishy-liberal and calling for the president who pardoned him to institute martial law and do a mulligan election, this one run by the military. While Trump will recognize this approach from his time on the golf course (and he's getting a lot of rounds in these days considering he's simultaneously yelling the American election was rigged against him by the shadowy forces of the Deep State and Communist Venez-China), we are forced to ask whether this new election would be free and fair. Just as we have to ask whether Sidney Powell's investigation of voting machines seized by presidential decree would be entirely above-board. I mean, even some of the cultists are expressing alarm at what is now happening in the Oval Office.

The Calm, Savvy types are by this point apoplectic. But none of this will work! The coup is stupid! Which brings us, again, to two points: even a Stupid Coup can work, and even if it doesn't, it will cause huge damage to the republic. It already has, even as the president's legal eagles have caught losses in 50-plus court cases. 126 House Republicans signed onto that ludicrous Texas suit seeking to simply throw out the election. This is now mainstream Republicanism—that elections which end in the other party winning power simply do not count. What many people are not ready to come to grips with is that this may be the first death throe for the American republic. Absent massive, transformative change to law and political economy with the next administration, we are well down a path to tyranny. Trump has opened the door, and if nobody finds a way to close it, somebody else will walk through it.

A good start in terms of closing it might be instituting real consequences for the president's behavior. State and federal prosecutors should follow the evidence and charge Trump and his family with any crimes they have committed, but in the meantime, the Congress has ample evidence to begin another impeachment probe. The president has relentlessly abused his power in an attempt to subjugate the national interest to his own, and the two are no longer compatible, if they ever were. Even if Senate Republicans will not convict him, House Democrats should impeach him again. Put it on the record. He still has more than 30 days left in the china shop.