A far too optimistic 2020 election wargame scenario, plus the meaning of Trump endorsing Q'Anon. And why it matters. Q'Anon is a real suicide cult
One of the pie in the sky fantasies is in an article by Frum who stated the following
quote
Post presidential Trump will face extreme legal and business troubles, including the ruin of the hospitality industry. The flow of payments to his businesses from U.S. taxpayers, from Republican campaigns, from favor-seeking corporations, and from foreign governments will all cease.
What would Trump do to maximize his cash flow before it stops? As lurid as our imaginations were over the four days of disaster planning, on this question, at least, we probably underestimated the dangerous possibilities.
End of quote
Ahem, and you really THINK that a desire for CASH FLOW enhancement will stop TRUMP? Let me run this by you AGAIN,
We still have NORMALCY BIAS. And it has to stop. In order to stop it, let's break it down.
In a word, process this. THE POTUS has voice support for Q'Anon which is a suicide cult in all but name, and is already described by the FBI as a domestic terror threat. And this is why there can be NO predicting what will happen November 2020 to January 2021. THE VOICING OF SUPPORT BY TRUMP FOR Q'Anon means any rational rule process by Trump and these people is a feel good fantasy.
FTR
I view these 2020 election scenarios as far too optimistic. But to start this off I will write this in. Recall these scenario deflections on the Conavirus? We will see much the same pattern of lying and worse from October 2020 to January 2021. Recall this ?
Egged on by Q'Anon, this pattern will continue unabated between Late October 2020 to the end of January 2021, in which we may have an actual battle at the WH to evict Trump. And no I am NOT kidding
None of these predecessors of Trump would do what is in the election scenarios discussed by David Frum, BUT TRUMP IS NOT A US PRESIDENT BOUND BY THE RULES EITHER.
So, why do we stick our heads in the sand and assume magically that "something will work out ? ".
TRUMP is the OPPOSITE of FDR. And we need to get real and to realize that what is brought up by Frum is a highly sanitized version of the hell we are in for.
Here is the ATLANTIC article.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/how-2020-election-could-go-wrong/614842/
quote
Where the System May Break
A war-game exercise simulating the 2020 election unmasked some key vulnerabilities.
JULY 31, 2020
Staff writer at The Atlantic
AARON BERNSTEIN / REUTERS
This story was updated on July 31, at 4:12pm.
On the same morning that the United States government reported the steepest economic collapse in U.S. history, President Donald Trump mused on Twitter about postponing the 2020 election. Trump is getting desperate, more desperate by the day. What might he do? What should Americans fear?
Earlier this summer, 67 former government officials and academic students of government gathered over four sessions of the nonpartisan Transition Integrity Project to analyze those questions. They included Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee; John Podesta, the former White House chief of staff who chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign; former Republican members of Congress; and a host of former elected officials, government staffers, consultants, and even journalists. I joined two of the sessions.
The sessions began with scenarios of what might happen on Election Day—a big Biden win, a narrow Biden win, a Trump win in the Electoral College coupled with a loss in the popular vote—and then played war games to ponder what might follow. The goal was not to make predictions, but rather to test scenarios and identify potential weak points in the system. The approach is common in the national-security world, but has not often before been applied to domestic politics.
The organizers of the event will in time produce a formal report on the results. But in light of the president’s ominous tweet yesterday, it’s worth summarizing some of what we found, while respecting the rules under which the event was held—which allowed for the disclosure of the substance of the exercise, but not what individual participants said.
The good news is that Trump cannot postpone the election or the next presidential inauguration; he has no means to do either of those things. Those dates are set by law or in the text of the Constitution.
Nor can Trump somehow cling to power after Inauguration Day once the electoral vote is certified against him. If the Electoral College certifies Joe Biden the winner when its votes are counted in Washington, D.C., on January 6, then at noon on January 20, Donald Trump ceases to be president. His signature loses all legal effect, the officer carrying the nuclear football walks away, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff does not take his call.
The bottom line: There do exist outer legal boundaries to the mischief that can be done by even the most corrupt president.
The bad news is that there is a lot of mischief that can be done within the legal boundaries by a determined president, especially with the compliance of the attorney general and enough political allies in the state capitals.
The worst news is that, faced with presidential lawlessness, few of the participants at the Transition Integrity Project found effective responses. The courts offered only slow, weak, and unreliable remedies. Street protests were difficult to mobilize and often proved counterproductive. Republican elected officials cowered even in the face of the most outrageous Trump acts. Democratic elected officials lacked the tools and clout to make much difference. Many of the games turned on who made the first bold move. Time after time, that first mover was Trump.
And even in the scenarios in which Biden’s team eventually won—that is, secured possession of the White House at noon on Inauguration Day, 2021—Team Trump by then had thoroughly poisoned the political system.
It diverted public resources to Trump personally.
It preemptively pardoned Trump associates and family members, and tried to pardon Trump himself from criminal charges including money laundering and tax evasion.
It intentionally tried to cause long-term economic damage so as to prevent early economic recovery—and boost Republican chances in the 2022 elections.
It destroyed, hid, or privatized public records.
It tried to sabotage the census to favor Republican redistricting after 2020.
It refused to cooperate with the incoming administration during the transition period, in ways that aggravated both the pandemic response and economic recovery.
And it sowed pervasive mistrust in the integrity of U.S. elections in ways that would polarize and embitter U.S. politics long after 2020.
Despite the president’s personal unpopularity as measured by polls, Trump’s side possessed—and used—important tactical advantages.
Those advantages start with the institutional powers of the presidency, notably the power to federalize the National Guard and take military control of state voting sites. They include also the asymmetry of the U.S. party system, and especially the fiercer team-mindedness of Trump loyalists and pro-Trump media.
The most persistent and powerful advantage, however, was the overconfidence of the legally minded Biden team that the Trump team would respect some norms and limits on its behavior. That expectation was again and again refuted by experience.
All of this, again, was just a tabletop exercise, specifically designed to test extreme scenarios—not a prediction of how things will play out. Perhaps everything will go smoothly. But as the president suggests postponing the election, it’s important to understand the hazards ahead, and the timelines and decision points that may prove crucial.
The voting period
The days of early voting, Election Day itself, and then the period of vote-counting that will follow offer fruitful possibilities for mischief.
In one of our scenarios, the attorney general sent federal marshals backed by the National Guard to seize vote-by-mail ballots, triggering a constitutional catastrophe that delayed the outcome of the count for weeks.
Local Republican officeholders have wide scope to burden voting by what they deem undesirable voters, especially ethnic minorities. The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department has more or less entirely abandoned the field of voting rights. In the Trump era, the division has shifted its effort toward litigating in support of claims of religious discrimination.
In the exercises, when the vote went against Trump, his team tried to convince his supporters that they had been robbed—and that they were therefore entitled to take extreme, even violent, actions. In our exercises, however, the game-winning strategy was to goad the other side into violence. This was particularly true for Team Trump, whose supporters already fear violence from anarchists and antifa.
The meeting of electors in the states
Under current law, all disputes over vote-counting are supposed to be resolved by December 8, 2020. The electors are supposed to convene on December 14 in their state capitals, where they will sign their electoral ballots. The days from December 8 to December 14 offer Team Trump the last clear chance to alter the outcome.
In some of our scenarios, local Republican officeholders sowed enough confusion to justify sending two slates of electors to Washington to be adjudicated. That was a high-risk tactic that did not usually pay off, but could tempt some pro-Trump state governments.
The meeting of electors in Washington, D.C.
This normally ceremonial event is scheduled for January 6, 2021. It will be presided over by the incumbent vice president, Mike Pence. We tested what might happen in a close result—one in which the Republicans hold on to the Senate and Trump falls short of an Electoral College majority by just a single state’s vote—if Pence somehow tried to insist that the pro-Trump slate of electors was valid.
This did not usually work. Pence was a weak link in the Trump team, too concerned about his own future and his own reputation to go all-out in the way the core Trump team wanted.
Generally, once we got past the December 8 date, the Trump team’s options for keeping power dwindled to zero. What was left then was scorched-earth self-enrichment, self-protection, and spite.
The transition of power
The Obama administration took office amid a national crisis in January 2009, after what is generally regarded by experts as the smoothest and most successful transition in presidential history. The outgoing Bush team kept the Obama team closely informed about decision making after the financial crisis struck in October 2008—and the incoming Obama team scrupulously followed the “one president at a time” rule of crisis management.
Nothing like that can be expected this winter. Instead, we are likely to see a recurrence of 1932–33, when the defeated Herbert Hoover tried to sabotage the incoming Roosevelt administration in hopes of preparing his own comeback in 1936. Trump will soon be fantasizing about running again in 2024. If his health does not permit it, his children may envision a dynasty of their own. These are not realistic plans. The Trump brand will be toxic in U.S. politics after the catastrophes of 2020. But the Trump inner circle will not believe that—and its members may hope that if they can cause Biden to stumble out of the gate, they will benefit.
The Bush administration helped the Obama administration to be ready on day one. The Trump administration may not return that courtesy. In one of our scenarios, Trump moved permanently to Mar-a-Lago the day after the election and never returned to the White House again. The whole government had to operate around a lame-duck president who simply refused to do any work at all.
But we also discussed whether Trump’s need to satisfy his ego and his desire for money might not cause him to foment a transition-season crisis—especially one that would gain him some credit with Russia or the oil states. Postpresidential Trump will face extreme legal and business troubles, including the ruin of the hospitality industry. The flow of payments to his businesses from U.S. taxpayers, from Republican campaigns, from favor-seeking corporations, and from foreign governments will all cease.
What would Trump do to maximize his cash flow before it stops? As lurid as our imaginations were over the four days of disaster planning, on this question, at least, we probably underestimated the dangerous possibilities.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to [email protected].
DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.
end of quote
Here is the big give away that this scenario, or set of scenarios is NOT based on reality.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-flirts-with-qanon-at-coronavirus-presser?ref=home
Quote
Trump Backs Violent QAnon Cultists at White House
CONVENTION-LEVEL WEIRD
The president offered sympathy for followers of the deranged conspiracy theory, who promptly cheered at his most explicit support yet for their so-called cause.
Updated Aug. 19, 2020 8:07PM ET / Published Aug. 19, 2020 6:27PM ET
President Donald Trump on Wednesday tentatively praised adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, thrilling followers of a violent group the FBI has described as a domestic terror threat with what they saw as new encouragement from the White House.
The remarks came just hours after Facebook deleted hundreds of QAnon groups from its platform—where the conspiracy has long thrived—because it had “demonstrated significant risks to public safety.”
When a reporter pressed the president about the movement’s false belief that he is “secretly saving the world from this satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals,” Trump instead played coy and even seemed to affirm the bogus QAnon belief that he’s leading a shadowy war against his child-molesting enemies.
“Well, I haven’t heard that,” Trump said. "But is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing? You know, if I can help save the world from problems, I’m willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there. And we are, actually.”
QAnon supporters have long hoped someone would ask Trump in detail about their beliefs at a White House briefing. His response came nowhere near clarifying that the conspiracy theory with him at its center is fake, and in a statement, Joe Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates slammed the president for “again giving voice to violence.”
“After calling neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville ‘fine people’ and tear gassing peaceful protesters following the murder of George Floyd, Donald Trump just sought to legitimize a conspiracy theory that the FBI has identified as a domestic terrorism threat,” he said.
Meanwhile, QAnon chatter on social media platforms like Twitter exploded with excitement.
QAnon supporter Roy Davis, who co-authored a successful book promoting the conspiracy theory, told The Daily Beast that Trump’s remarks would be seen as validation for QAnon believers—and as potent evidence to win more converts.
“It’s going to gain more followers,” Davis said. "QAnon lives to fight another day.”
Rather than refute the ludicrous QAnon worldview, Trump described the movement as “gaining in popularity.”
“I don’t know much about the movement, other than that I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate,” Trump said.
He also said, of QAnon followers: “These are people that love our country.”
QAnon is premised on the idea that Trump will someday order mass arrests and executions of his political opponents, in a much-awaited mass purge QAnon believers call “The Storm.”
But QAnon believers’ dreams of violence aren’t confined to their message boards: Adherents have been linked to kidnapping and other violent crimes, including a terrorist incident at the Hoover Dam, and two murders.
At the same time, QAnon believers have gained some respectability within the GOP. Trump has invited QAnon believers to the White House and retweeted them, while former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn filmed himself taking the “QAnon oath.”
Last week, Trump readily embraced QAnon believer Marjorie Taylor Greene’s victory in a congressional primary runoff election in Georgia, which set the stage for a QAnon believer to win a seat in Congress.
With reporting by Sam Stein
End of quote
Why again the above scenarios are way too optimistic
A. Q'Anon, now getting a "quasi legitimized" stake in the WH will NOT respond to rules and even threats of eviction via the police, and secret service, in a rational manner. We may even see Q'Anon based suicide bomber tactics about the WH if the secret service, and others try to evict Trump, even if PELOSI were acting president, January 22, 2021.
B. If Trump declares he has WON 2020 "elections" even if he has lost the ELECTORIAL college, and the popular vote, he would also consider asking Vladimir PUTIN to militarily intervene to "save his regime" . Even if that did not happen, there are other CIVILIAN-Military nightmare scenarios
This would lead to a horrid set of military-civilian brush wars to consider
quote
Six Scenarios for Military Intervention After January 20
We have to be able to talk about the military’s political influence.
- AUGUST 18, 2020
A heated debate is unfolding over a possible role to be played by the U.S. military in safeguarding the democratic transfer of presidential power on January 20, 2021. Two retired U.S. Army officers, John Nagl and Paul Yingling, began the furor with an open letter to Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, encouraging him to take an active role in ensuring the Constitutionally-mandated democratic transition occurs in January, should it become necessary. But the debate is itself symptomatic of a deeper problem in the political discourse, a disorder that opens the United States to six scenarios where an authoritarian coup is made more likely.
Despite what critics say, there is a logical and arguably appropriate (if not legal) role for the military in mitigating the disaster of a contested presidential election. Unfortunately, due to a quirk in American civil-military relations both as practiced in the academy and as taught in the staff and war colleges, it seems unlikely that military leaders will ever feel empowered to take on that role. If any of the unlikely and very distasteful scenarios described below comes to pass, then we will face a real disaster unless the military acts.
Equally true, however, is that most other interventions by the military would be disastrous.
To parse the debate, it is important to understand that there are two competing visions of the military in the public sphere today. One is the orthodox view, steeped in the reassuring Huntingtonian principles of subordination and nonpartisan, apolitical professionalism. The other is the heterodox view — despised and scorned wherever it appears — that dispenses with the self-serving myth that the military (or indeed any million-person, trillion-dollar organization) can ever be apolitical. Nonpartisan, yes; professional, yes; but never apolitical.
The problem is that the first perspective cannot abide any debate on the role of the military in politics, since these thinkers believe there is no acceptable role. For them, any overt action by the military in the political arena is forbidden. For reasons that have never been clear to me, covert action by the military in the political arena — for example, community relations, industrial relations, congressional relations, or public relations — seems to be fine.
From the second perspective, the military has a gravitational effect on American political life, and so inaction is no less politically charged than action.
Related articles
“. . . All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic”: An Open Letter to Gen. Milley
The Military Won’t Save Us – and You Shouldn’t Want Them To
Who Decides Who Is a ‘Domestic Enemy’?
These two perspectives are not distributed equally. Only the first is taught at military colleges and debated in polite society. The second is hounded wherever it appears, dismissed as a form of crypto-fascism. From my perspective, however, the opposite is closer to the truth.
On one hand, the orthodox view to keep the military separate from politics has had a long-term corrosive effect, contributing to an ineffective, wasteful military that is never criticized or audited thoroughly enough, and must be left alone as an autonomous, honorable organization for so long as it forsakes any overt political behavior. On the other hand, that same view poses an immediate danger as it insists that the military roll over and accept whatever anti-democratic actions are undertaken by a president clearly intending to do what he can to break the Constitution.
The second perspective — that the military simply is not above or outside of the nation’s politics — demands that we call military silence and inaction by its name: in the worst scenarios, complicity in the shredding of the Constitution, comfort to the enemies of democracy, and facilitation of an authoritarian coup (not by the military itself, but rather the unlawful seizure of power by Trump).
In their open letter, Nagl and Yingling were asking the general to act if and only if an authoritarian coup has already taken place — and to do so strictly in accordance with his personal oath to the Constitution. We see the ascendency of the first perspective in the vitriol poured upon their argument. These otherwise respected figures are vilified as advocating a military take-over and mocked for suggesting that a staff officer (especially the chairman, who has no direct command authority over any troops) should somehow be involved. It is as though the authors were channeling Othello’s Iago, a Spartan dog if ever there was one, in their advice to Milley: “follow him, to serve your turn upon him.”
Nagl and Yingling’s critics are right in describing such military intervention as unlawful and outrageous, but they err in labeling it a military take-over and are wrong in assuring the public it won’t be preferable to the alternative.
A forced transfer of power from Trump to someone else is not a traditional coup but rather a pronunciamento. Although unknown in American history, the type of political transition does occur globally. Of course, it can only be countenanced as an alternative to Trump’s own authoritarian coup.
Those who love democracy will loathe any of the scenarios that follow, and happily none seems particularly likely, especially if either candidate concedes the election.
Six Scenarios
Six scenarios come to my mind in which the military may, nevertheless, reasonably be forced to act in contravention of all law and good order in order to ensure that law and good order are restored.
Scenario 1: If Biden is perceived as having won and is sworn in by legitimate authorities, but the passage of executive authority (and the nuclear football) is not acknowledged by the federal agencies or some faction therein′..
Scenario 2: If Biden is incapacitated and someone else is sworn in over the objections of Trump and his allies, questioning the passage of executive authority.
Most likely and troubling would be if the general public and key legitimating institutions are incapable of coming to an agreement on who wins the election by January 20. If so, then two other risky scenarios arise.
These next scenarios may seem unlikely, since the Presidential Succession Act would be triggered, which notably would make House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the commander in chief. However, as we have seen recently during Trump’s impeachment crisis, a series of legal arguments have already been voiced in the public sphere regarding the legal authority of the act. However spurious these may seem, the fact is that Trump already has a legal justification for a refusal to hand over power to Pelosi, and might reasonably use Pelosi’s negative perception among his base as a wedge to force a constitutional crisis.
Scenario 3: Trump may be sworn-in as a stop-gap measure. Here, the integrity of the democratic process will be sacrificed in order to mitigate damage to the Constitution, but the red line will be pushed back.
Scenario 4: Trump may maintain de facto power and dispense with the symbolic act of being reinstated, in effect denying that a breach of the 20th Amendment took place.
In scenarios 3 and 4, the particular danger is that Trump will be emboldened by this de facto coup and will follow his usual method of slowly degrading institutions. He will replace democratic loyalists with his own allies, gradually gaining control of the federal agencies through appointments, forced retirements, and firings.
Finally, there are two additional scenarios that may overlap with any of the four above, although these appear less likely and would be easier to recognize and counter.
Scenario 5: Trump takes active steps to suspend the normal functions of government through manipulation of the War Powers Act, Insurrection Act, or some other seemingly lawful cover.
Scenario 6: Trump uses loyal security agencies to commit acts of violence and intimidation in a traditional, bloody coup. This is the worst of all outcomes but seems least likely of all, and here military intervention would in all likelihood be authorized by Congress.
In all six scenarios, the military has a role it can choose to play or not to play. Choosing inaction will not be any more legally or morally justifiable than choosing to act, since the premise of all six scenarios is that the American experiment in democracy is suspended.
The hardest thing in each of these scenarios will be to pinpoint a moment in time beyond which officers refuse to follow Trump’s orders. Since doing so will place these officers outside the law, they must only do so once they are certain Trump has already placed himself outside of the law. Notably, in many of these scenarios, no natural red line is ever likely to appear, other than at noon, January 20, 2021.
Of course, for so long as the myth that the military is apolitical remains, we will be unable to intelligently debate how the military should wield its political influence, and it is for this reason that Trump may well once again outfox his opponents in any of the six scenarios described.
Coups and pronunciamentos are nasty things, and discussing them in the American context is deeply distasteful. Nevertheless, facing these scenarios may help us understand the real dynamics general and flag officers will be forced to navigate in the coming months.
Happily, despite the impassioned backlash against Nagl and Yingling’s letter, there is nothing dangerous about discussing these scenarios. We will be better prepared to respond to this new vulnerability in American democracy, whenever it emerges. We may even preserve democracy for another generation.
Thomas Crosbie is an associate professor at the Royal Danish Defence College’s Centre for Joint Operations, Institute for Military Operations. A sociologist by training, his research focuses on military politics, the military profession and the conduct of war.
end of quote
We have to be ready for this sort of crack up, and even this above has NOT factored in what happens if PUTIN INVADES THE USA militarily speaking to "support Trump".
C. The David Frum contingency planning is way too optimistic, for the following reason:
MONEY SHORT FALLS WILL NOT INDUCE TRUMP TO QUIT. Even having a SEAL unit invasion of the WH , January 21, 2021 would not induce Trump to Quit voluntarily.
D. We need to process it, that Trump, due to Q'Anon, and worse has weaponized crazy. He is totally delusional. Worse than JIM JONES of the "peoples temple".
Summing up
1st: We need to process it, that Trump, due to Q'Anon, and worse has weaponized crazy. He is not bound by rational thought processes
2nd: MONEY flow short falls, will not lead Trump to voluntarily quit the White House
3rd: We need to get it that even IF the Russian Federation does not invade the US Eastern Seaboard near DC in an attempt to "protect Trump" that we almost certainly will have US Civilian-Military "issues" to get over
4th: TRUMP is the OPPOSITE of FDR. And we need to get real and to realize that what is brought up by Frum is a highly sanitized version of the hell we are in for.
5th: PUTIN GOT TRUMP in the WH to specifically WRECK the United States. By any means necessary short of an all out nuclear attack upon North America
I hope this has gotten your attention. We need to snap out of it and to realize how serious this really is
Andrew Beckwith, PhD