Trump just promised an authoritarian ‘task force’ to impose Christian ideology

[MrMoe]

Typical diversion.

The topic is Trump.

The comment I was replying to was also a diversion.

 

[RocksInMyHead]

Your own words: "something is only a lie if the person saying it knows that it is untrue." So by your own admission the possibility exists that the author of the article could be lying, since we can't read their mind.

They could be. but unless you're a mind reader, you have no way of knowing. However, I don't think that there's anything objectively untrue in the article.

Okay then copy and paste the "plenty of supporting evidence" from the article in your next reply. That's all I'm asking.

The entire article consists of the author's reasons for believing the statement in the headline. That's how an opinion article works. Picking out the supporting evidence would just be copying and pasting the whole thing.

Intelligence is subjective. So it's not a fair comparison. Either Trump is doing what the author is claiming or he's not. That is objective.

The author makes no claims about what Trump is doing (aside from promising a task force - which he objectively did). The rest of the author's claims are his opinions of what Trump will do. There's nothing objective about future predictions.

 

[A2SG]

A dictator by any other name is still a dictator? It's seems you still believe he can still become a dictator even though I provided an experts analysis saying he can't.

That decision currently rests with the US Supreme Court.

Absolute Presidential immunity ≠ dictator.

The ability to do anything with zero legal consequences, so long as he isn't impeached again would mean Trump can do whatever he wants and get away with it.

That's a dictator, whatever term you call it.

-- A2SG, we can only hope the SCOTUS has a shred of responsibility left...

 

[wing2000]

Basically you're saying absolute presidential immunity is a license to be a dictator. And people actually believe Trump has a chance of getting this?

Yes. He learned from his 1st term This time around, he will not make the mistake of appointing people who are more loyal to the United States than to Donald Trump. From the Pentagon to the Justice Department, only "yes men" will be appointed. Regardless of what a judge may say, Trump will simply ignore the courts and carry out his directive. I also think a significant portion of his base wants this.

 

[Hans Blaster]

He can't be a dictator, even if he wanted to be. And I'm pretty sure he was joking he said that he wanted to be a dictator for one day.

Trump has no sense of humor. It's his desire to be dictator that is most troubling.

 

[wing2000]

...suggesting the execution the nation's top General because he put the country's security interest ahead of Trump's desires tells you all you need to know of Trump's boundaries....or lack there of.

 

[MrMoe]

They could be. but unless you're a mind reader, you have no way of knowing. However, I don't think that there's anything objectively untrue in the article.

The headline is objectively untrue.

The entire article consists of the author's reasons for believing the statement in the headline. That's how an opinion article works. Picking out the supporting evidence would just be copying and pasting the whole thing.

No it wouldn't. it would be quoting just the sentences that you thing best show what you claim.

The author makes no claims about what Trump is doing (aside from promising a task force - which he objectively did). The rest of the author's claims are his opinions of what Trump will do. There's nothing objective about future predictions.

You left out the "to impose Christian ideology" part - which he objectively did not do.

​

 

[MrMoe]

Yes. He learned from his 1st term This time around, he will not make the mistake of appointing people who are more loyal to the United States than to Donald Trump. From the Pentagon to the Justice Department, only "yes men" will be appointed. Regardless of what a judge may say, Trump will simply ignore the courts and carry out his directive. I also think a significant portion of his base wants this.

...suggesting the execution the nation's top General because he put the country's security interest ahead of Trump's desires tells you all you need to know of Trump's boundaries....or lack there of.

"Washington Post columnist Ishaan Tharoor recently cited several examples of tactics many people think Trump would use to become a dictator: “As my colleagues have reported over the past year, Trump has made clear his stark, authoritarian vision for a potential second term. He would embark on a wholesale purge of the federal bureaucracy, weaponize the Justice Department to explicitly go after his political opponents (something he claims is being done to him), stack government agencies across the board with political appointees prescreened as ideological Trump loyalists, and dole out pardons to myriad officials and apparatchiks as incentives to do his bidding or stay loyal.”


There’s a simple problem with these prognostications: Trump can’t actually do these things. The presidential pardon power isn’t broad enough to preemptively immunize widespread criminal activity; political appointees must be confirmed by a majority of the Senate (which would reject Trump’s worst co-conspirators); and the majority of federal officials serve across presidential administrations in a large, powerful and entrenched bureaucracy.

The federal bureaucracy can’t simply be “purged.” Valid federal legislation authorizes and funds government agencies — and powerful unions protect their workers — so the courts won’t allow federal employees to be fired en masse absent duly enacted legislation. Republican presidents have long tried to shrink the administrative state. They’ve failed miserably."


"Unlike a dictator, Trump wouldn’t control most government activity — at the federal, state or local level. If the Democrats take the House in 2024, would Trump control how they vote on legislation? Would he force state court judges to govern how he wants them to? Local school boards?

No way. To be a dictatorship, people have to actually do the things the dictator says. Given his historic unpopularity ratings, the resistance to a second Trump term will likely be fierce at every level of government."


"The one way Trump could actually achieve a dictatorship is if he commandeered the military to use force — or its threat — throughout the country on his behalf. But there’s no reason whatsoever to think he could pull that off. Trump has long had strained relations with military leaders, including his secretaries of defense John Mattis and Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

As we saw with Milley — who actively opposed Trump’s attempt to reverse the 2020 presidential election results — military leaders won’t just obey Trump’s illegal initiatives. The military doesn’t “take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” Milley said in his departing speech last September. “We take an oath to the Constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is America — and we’re willing to die to protect it.”"

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/11/opinions/trump-election-2024-dictator-cooper/index.html

At this point this is just fearmongering. Trump may be a trash president but he wont be a dictator.

 

[MrMoe]

Trump has no sense of humor. It's his desire to be dictator that is most troubling.

I've heard the opposite from people, even some who dislike him. They say he's funny and that's one of the things they like about him.

 

[wing2000]

"Washington Post columnist Ishaan Tharoor recently cited several examples of tactics many people think Trump would use to become a dictator: “As my colleagues have reported over the past year, Trump has made clear his stark, authoritarian vision for a potential second term. He would embark on a wholesale purge of the federal bureaucracy, weaponize the Justice Department to explicitly go after his political opponents (something he claims is being done to him), stack government agencies across the board with political appointees prescreened as ideological Trump loyalists, and dole out pardons to myriad officials and apparatchiks as incentives to do his bidding or stay loyal.”


There’s a simple problem with these prognostications: Trump can’t actually do these things. The presidential pardon power isn’t broad enough to preemptively immunize widespread criminal activity;

He's wrong.

The Constitution confers on the president broad power “to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” If not subject to traditional constraints, detailed below, the pardon power can be abused to license the president’s allies to perpetrate violence on his behalf; to break the law to advance his political fortunes; or to cover up the president’s own crimes.

What We Can Expect — The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025

www.authoritarianplaybook2025.org

[We've already seen the Republicans in Congress fail twice to use the power of impeachment to hold Trump accountable. I have no reason to believe they will stand up to Trump in a 2nd term].

political appointees must be confirmed by a majority of the Senate (which would reject Trump’s worst co-conspirators);
and the majority of federal officials serve across presidential administrations in a large, powerful and entrenched bureaucracy.

The federal bureaucracy can’t simply be “purged.” Valid federal legislation authorizes and funds government agencies — and powerful unions protect their workers — so the courts won’t allow federal employees to be fired en masse absent duly enacted legislation. Republican presidents have long tried to shrink the administrative state. They’ve failed miserably."

Under long-standing rules, the president can make around 4,000 political appointments, only approximately 1,200 of which require Senate confirmation. To promptly fill those positions in 2025, Trump and allies are engaged in an intensive screening process that, as Axios described, “drills down more on political philosophy than on experience, education or other credentials.”

For positions requiring Senate confirmation, Trump frequently sought to evade that check during his first term. Under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA), certain people can temporarily fill open roles when there is no Senate-confirmed official in place, an allowance Trump eagerly utilized.

While presidential administrations of both parties have taken advantage of the FVRA’s ambiguities, Trump was unique in the way he leveraged high-profile firings and forced resignations to exercise maximum control over executive branch officials in some of the most powerful government agencies. We saw this across multiple agencies in his administration, from the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security, to the Pentagon and agency inspectors general. Trump expressed enthusiasm for installing temporary, unaccountable agency leaders, telling the press in 2019, “I like acting [officials]. It gives me more flexibility.”


In one case, a federal court found Trump’s FVRA abuse unlawful, but that did not stop him. In February 2020, The Washington Post found that “Trump has kept acting officials in charge of top agencies and departments so much that they’ve accounted for 1 out of every 9 days in those positions. Across 22 Cabinet-level jobs, acting officials have served a total of 2,736 days — more than seven years of combined time.”

To fulfill his campaign pledge to “totally obliterate the deep state” in his next term, Trump will go further. He has promised to reissue his October 2020 executive order, Creating a Schedule F in the Excepted Service, to terminate scores of career employees, which was issued by Trump too late in his presidency to be implemented. President Biden took office before the order could go into effect and he rescinded it in January 2021. As noted above, Trump has promised to prioritize “immediately” re-issuing the order upon his inauguration. Experts estimate that could impact “anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands in a workforce of 2.1 million.”

"Unlike a dictator, Trump wouldn’t control most government activity — at the federal, state or local level. If the Democrats take the House in 2024, would Trump control how they vote on legislation? Would he force state court judges to govern how he wants them to? Local school boards?

No way. To be a dictatorship, people have to actually do the things the dictator says. Given his historic unpopularity ratings, the resistance to a second Trump term will likely be fierce at every level of government."

I'm not betting the future of our country on the Democrats winning -- after all, if Trump were to win, it's likely Democrats lose both houses as well.

"The one way Trump could actually achieve a dictatorship is if he commandeered the military to use force — or its threat — throughout the country on his behalf. But there’s no reason whatsoever to think he could pull that off. Trump has long had strained relations with military leaders, including his secretaries of defense John Mattis and Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

As we saw with Milley — who actively opposed Trump’s attempt to reverse the 2020 presidential election results — military leaders won’t just obey Trump’s illegal initiatives. The military doesn’t “take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” Milley said in his departing speech last September. “We take an oath to the Constitution and we take an oath to the idea that is America — and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/11/opinions/trump-election-2024-dictator-cooper/index.html

At this point this is just fearmongering. Trump may be a trash president but he wont be a dictator.

I think you and many others are in denial.



“Keeping the military out of domestic law enforcement is a foundational American principle enshrined in law to protect individual liberties and preserve democratic order. We saw Trump and his allies ignore both the principle and the law in his first administration, exploiting loopholes to flood downtown D.C. with National Guard troops in order to brutally disperse nonviolent demonstrators at Lafayette Square.
In a second Trump administration, he has committed to much worse, promising to deploy troops to put down protests on Inauguration Day, send troops into Democratic cities to enforce order, and militarize southern border enforcement. Politicizing institutions like the military is a hallmark authoritarian tactic intended to silence dissenters, target vulnerable communities, and coerce fealty to the autocratic leader. We should be prepared for Trump, newly empowered and surrounded by enablers, to act with impunity, placing unprecedented stress on our military and democratic institutions.”

— Aisha Woodward, Head of Constraining Executive Power Team and Policy Strategist, Protect Democracy

What We Can Expect — The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025

www.authoritarianplaybook2025.org

 

[RocksInMyHead]

The headline is objectively untrue.

It is not. The headline is an opinion.

You left out the "to impose Christian ideology" part - which he objectively did not do.

That is the author's opinion of what the promised task force will be used for. It cannot be objectively untrue because said task force does not exist yet.

 

[MrMoe]

He's wrong.

The Constitution confers on the president broad power “to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” If not subject to traditional constraints, detailed below, the pardon power can be abused to license the president’s allies to perpetrate violence on his behalf; to break the law to advance his political fortunes; or to cover up the president’s own crimes.

What We Can Expect — The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025

www.authoritarianplaybook2025.org

[We've already seen the Republicans in Congress fail twice to use the power of impeachment to hold Trump accountable. I have no reason to believe they will stand up to Trump in a 2nd term].

The link is connected to a website called Project Democracy, which seems to be a very hyper-partisan organization.

Anyway, he's right. The presidential pardon power isn’t broad enough to preemptively immunize widespread criminal activity.

The Constitution says the president can pardon crimes. What part says he can only pardon federal but not state crimes? Where does the Con...

Answer (1 of 30): The USA like Australia is a federation. When the constitution was set up it ONLY applied to the federal government. Giving that government specific powers while retaining all other powers for the states. In effect the individual states were the REAL countries and the federal go...

www.quora.com

Under long-standing rules, the president can make around 4,000 political appointments, only approximately 1,200 of which require Senate confirmation. To promptly fill those positions in 2025, Trump and allies are engaged in an intensive screening process that, as Axios described, “drills down more on political philosophy than on experience, education or other credentials.”

For positions requiring Senate confirmation, Trump frequently sought to evade that check during his first term. Under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act (FVRA), certain people can temporarily fill open roles when there is no Senate-confirmed official in place, an allowance Trump eagerly utilized.

While presidential administrations of both parties have taken advantage of the FVRA’s ambiguities, Trump was unique in the way he leveraged high-profile firings and forced resignations to exercise maximum control over executive branch officials in some of the most powerful government agencies. We saw this across multiple agencies in his administration, from the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security, to the Pentagon and agency inspectors general. Trump expressed enthusiasm for installing temporary, unaccountable agency leaders, telling the press in 2019, “I like acting [officials]. It gives me more flexibility.”


In one case, a federal court found Trump’s FVRA abuse unlawful, but that did not stop him. In February 2020, The Washington Post found that “Trump has kept acting officials in charge of top agencies and departments so much that they’ve accounted for 1 out of every 9 days in those positions. Across 22 Cabinet-level jobs, acting officials have served a total of 2,736 days — more than seven years of combined time.”

To fulfill his campaign pledge to “totally obliterate the deep state” in his next term, Trump will go further. He has promised to reissue his October 2020 executive order, Creating a Schedule F in the Excepted Service, to terminate scores of career employees, which was issued by Trump too late in his presidency to be implemented. President Biden took office before the order could go into effect and he rescinded it in January 2021. As noted above, Trump has promised to prioritize “immediately” re-issuing the order upon his inauguration. Experts estimate that could impact “anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands in a workforce of 2.1 million.”

Trump Can’t Be Dictator on ‘Day One’ — Or in a Second Term. Here’s Why.

Even with a head start in a first term, it would take Trump a long time to bend our democracy to his will.

www.politico.com

"At the same time, panic is unnecessary. As someone who lived through the birth and growth of authoritarianism in Turkey, I’m something of an expert on the subject — and no, another four years of Trump is not enough time to turn America into a dictatorship.
What I saw in Turkey over the course of two decades of Tayyip Erdogan’s rule — working as a journalist for much of that time — is that building a dictatorship takes a long time. Similarly in Poland and Hungary, illiberal governments have needed years to chip away at the rule of law. There is a particular rhythm and process to dismantling a democracy, a kind of incubation period for despotism: There are laws to change, institutions to dismantle, alliances to build. With a concerted effort by Trump, the incubation period could be squeezed into eight more consecutive years, but not four."

I'm not betting the future of our country on the Democrats winning -- after all, if Trump were to win, it's likely Democrats lose both houses as well.

Trump has barely won anything since 2016.

I think you and many others are in denial.

No, I'm just not falling for the fearmongering.

“Keeping the military out of domestic law enforcement is a foundational American principle enshrined in law to protect individual liberties and preserve democratic order. We saw Trump and his allies ignore both the principle and the law in his first administration, exploiting loopholes to flood downtown D.C. with National Guard troops in order to brutally disperse nonviolent demonstrators at Lafayette Square.
In a second Trump administration, he has committed to much worse, promising to deploy troops to put down protests on Inauguration Day, send troops into Democratic cities to enforce order, and militarize southern border enforcement. Politicizing institutions like the military is a hallmark authoritarian tactic intended to silence dissenters, target vulnerable communities, and coerce fealty to the autocratic leader. We should be prepared for Trump, newly empowered and surrounded by enablers, to act with impunity, placing unprecedented stress on our military and democratic institutions.”

— Aisha Woodward, Head of Constraining Executive Power Team and Policy Strategist, Protect Democracy

What We Can Expect — The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025

www.authoritarianplaybook2025.org

So, to the left Trump is basically Schrodinger's Mastermind. He is simultaneously an idiot and at the same time a political mastermind that manipulate laws and exploit loopholes to become a Hitler like dictator. Hilarious.

​

 

[MrMoe]

It is not. The headline is an opinion.

You said:

The author makes no claims about what Trump is doing (aside from promising a task force - which he objectively did)

That is stated in the headline. "To impose Christian Ideology" is also in the headline. So following your logic that means he objectively did that too.

 

[RocksInMyHead]

You said:


That is stated in the headline. "To impose Christian Ideology" is also in the headline. So following your logic that means he objectively did that too.

There's a difference between "Trump just promised a 'task force' to impose Christian ideology" (the headline as written) and "Trump just promised a 'task force to impose Christian ideology'" (what you're characterizing the headline as). The first one is actually saying "Trump just promised a task force that will, in my opinion, be used to impose Christian ideology." The second one is saying "Trump just made a promise that he will create a task force to impose Christian ideology on the country." Punctuation is important, and is frequently used creatively in headlines to get you to click on the story.

For a more benign example, see "The panda bear eats shoots and leaves." Compare to "The panda bear eats, shoots, and leaves." Same words, two totally different meanings - the only difference is two commas.

 

[rjs330]

If Trump is really acting like a woke leftist, it is strange that so many on the right are so enamored of him.

Perhaps that's not actually true and instead just a lame attempt to deflect from the man's many issues, personally, legally and professionally.

It's all about human psychology. Let's just take what Trump said and make a change.

"Upon taking office, I will create a new federal task force on fighting anti-lgbtq bias to be led by a fully reformed Department of Justice that’s fair and equitable,” he promised. “Its mission will be to investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment and persecution against the LGBTQ in America.”

If Biden would have said that then the left in this country would be all for it.

Or perhaps
Upon taking office, I will create a new federal task force on fighting anti-African American bias to be led by a fully reformed Department of Justice that’s fair and equitable,” he promised. “Its mission will be to investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment and persecution against African Americans in America.”

There would be NO outcry from the left of authoritarianism. None of you would be posting about authoritarian task forces and the like.

Let's be honest. This is about human psychology and what the left has been doing for years in creating an oppressor/oppressed division in the country. Now that someone on the right is starting to do it, suddenly you guys are very concerned.

I don't think you are concerned at all. Because if you really were you would have been speaking out against it for a long time. You're not seriously concerned. You are just peeved that the right is borrowing from the playbook and Trump mentioned Christians instead any race but white people the LGBTQ community.

If you really were concerned about the general idea, you would be against the feds doing any such thing regarding anyone. Like I am.

 

[rjs330]

The funny thing about dictators is that once they are dictators, they might decide that they'd like to stay dictators. And who's going to stop them? They're dictators, after all.

If I follow you and others correctly Trump already tried to be a dictator and it didn't work. How exactly is he supposed to accomplish it this time?

 

[SimplyMe]

It's all about human psychology. Let's just take what Trump said and make a change.

"Upon taking office, I will create a new federal task force on fighting anti-lgbtq bias to be led by a fully reformed Department of Justice that’s fair and equitable,” he promised. “Its mission will be to investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment and persecution against the LGBTQ in America.”

If Biden would have said that then the left in this country would be all for it.

Or perhaps
Upon taking office, I will create a new federal task force on fighting anti-African American bias to be led by a fully reformed Department of Justice that’s fair and equitable,” he promised. “Its mission will be to investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment and persecution against African Americans in America.”

There would be NO outcry from the left of authoritarianism. None of you would be posting about authoritarian task forces and the like.

Let's be honest. This is about human psychology and what the left has been doing for years in creating an oppressor/oppressed division in the country. Now that someone on the right is starting to do it, suddenly you guys are very concerned.

I don't think you are concerned at all. Because if you really were you would have been speaking out against it for a long time. You're not seriously concerned. You are just peeved that the right is borrowing from the playbook and Trump mentioned Christians instead any race but white people the LGBTQ community.

If you really were concerned about the general idea, you would be against the feds doing any such thing regarding anyone. Like I am.

That's nice. But the right, if the anti-LGBT task force had been announced like that, would be up in arms and make claims about how it would be an authoritarian task force designed to force the LGBT on everyone.

 

[Nithavela]

If I follow you and others correctly Trump already tried to be a dictator and it didn't work. How exactly is he supposed to accomplish it this time?

I don't think he is competent enough to become a dictator, but he certainly has less people who would oppose him in his party, this time around.

 

[A2SG]

I've heard the opposite from people, even some who dislike him. They say he's funny and that's one of the things they like about him.

Well, there is a difference between laughing with someone, and laughing at them.

-- A2SG, I'd say Trump falls more into the latter category....

 

[rjs330]

That's nice. But the right, if the anti-LGBT task force had been announced like that, would be up in arms and make claims about how it would be an authoritarian task force designed to force the LGBT on everyone.

And you'd be all for it. Like I said.

And in case you missed it, I'm not for it from anyone. Including Trump.

I don't buy I to all the oppressed and oppressor nonsense. No one in America is oppressed and no one is an oppressor despite what the left claims.