Longtime Pentagon reporter Helene Cooper said that she can't find any military officials who attended the meeting in Virginia with President Donald Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth and liked what they heard."I have yet to find a single military official who was in the audience today who thought tha...
Things might get spicy when we finally have folks that decide to uphold their oaths to uphold the Constitution. We certainly haven’t seen any in the Executive Branch yet, and most of the Judicial and Legislative seems to be abdicating their oaths too.
Note the oath the enlisted take specifically says they will follow the orders of the President.
That’s not the one that matters.
The officer’s oath does not include that, specifically for this reason:
I’m 99% sure that these oaths apply across the board regardless of branch, because they apply to more than just commissioned officers.
Foreign and DOMESTIC
Yeah they both say that.
Only one also says they’ll do what the POTUS says.
I’ve already seen the taking point showing up on the right that the “… and domestic” part applies to the “antifa terrorists turning our cities into war zones and besieging federal (especially ICE) buildings.”
I really hope that GOs don’t take the oath lightly. When I taught that lesson to my cadets it was a serious conversation and usually involved stories about commanders I knew who got fired or court-martialed for everything including extra-marital affairs, to belittling subordinates, to fabricating illegal orders (and then breaking international law). I hope it doesn’t come to it, but I imagine that a military court would be less partisan than our current courts have been.
And these generals will follow suit. People keep saying how serious and career-driven they are. What makes you think they won’t put their career over the constitution like everyone else?
The federal courts are filled with people appointed through the political process, and a lot of the bullshit that’s made it through the courts is a result of venue shopping to find sympathetic judges. But more importantly, the Trump administration has been losing a lot in court… until the Supreme Court steps in and reverses those rulings on the shadow docket. It’s not the whole judicial branch that’s the problem, just the ones that matter the most.
The legislature isn’t doing its job because it’s controlled by Republicans, and as a party they’ve gone through multiple purges to root out anyone who would put the country or the constitution ahead of Trump’s slightest whim.
The executive branch has been under siege all year, a lot of people were fired without cause, and a lot of other people are resigning or getting fired rather than doing shit that’s illegal and unconstitutional. While in some instances there are lawsuits making their way through the courts, there’s only so much they can do after they get escorted out of the building.
To the best of my knowledge, the leadership of the military has had much more continuity and isn’t so easily stacked with loyalists. You can’t just grab some 20 something techbro douchebag from Elon’s little band of hitler youth, or the last lawyer that was dumb enough to represent Trump and make them a general.
And there is also a big difference between what might be demanded of some congressman or civil servant compared to the military. While I doubt we’ll see anyone directly disobeying an order from the white house that has troops standing around outside federal buildings, I do think it’s pretty likely that an order to nuke an American city would be disobeyed. The question for each of them is where they draw the line. Openly defying orders is not something to be done lightly in the military.
If enough of them decide simultaneously that Trump is the main impediment to their careers, then you have a good, old-fashioned military coup.
Everyone there would have been the one for commissioned officers right below what you posted.