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Tag: u s troops
Pentagon Officials Feared Trump Would Order U.S. Troops To Enforce Coup

Pentagon Officials Feared Trump Would Order U.S. Troops To Enforce Coup

During its final January 6 hearing Monday, the House Select Committee found that leading up to the insurrection, Department of Defense officials worried that Donald Trump would impose an ‘illegal order’ on U.S. troops to support his attempted coup, HuffPost reports.

“The select committee recognizes that some at the [Defense] department had genuine concerns, counseling caution, that President Trump might give an illegal order to use the military in support of his efforts to overturn the election,” the committee stated in the 161-page executive summary of the report.

The committee did not find any evidence that the Department of Defense supported Trump’s coup attempt in any way. However, the report says “President Trump had authority and responsibility to direct deployment of the National Guard in the District of Columbia, but never gave any order to deploy the National Guard on January 6th or on any other day.”

The report continues, “Nor did he instruct any federal law enforcement agency to assist. Because the authority to deploy the National Guard had been delegated to the Department of Defense, the secretary of defense could, and ultimately did deploy the Guard.”

Trump has blamed Nancy Pelosi for not calling on troops to immediately intervene.

HuffPost reports that the executive summary of the report also includes an explanation of the committee’s “recommendations of criminal prosecution against Trump and several of his allies on charges that include making false statements, obstructing an official proceeding and seditious conspiracy.”

The committee wrote, “The underlying and fundamental feature of that planning was the effort to get one man, Vice President Mike Pence, to assert and then exercise unprecedented and lawless powers to unilaterally alter the actual election outcome on January 6.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

#EndorseThis: Our Fearful And Feckless Commander-in-Chief

#EndorseThis: Our Fearful And Feckless Commander-in-Chief

Why hasn’t Donald Trump ever visited American troops in a war zone, like every normal president does? He claims to be too busy and insists that there are secret plans afoot.

But Stephen Colbert isn’t buying his excuses and puts more faith in the Washington Post version, as explained by an anonymous aide: “He’s never been interested…he’s afraid of those situations.” Or maybe it’s just his bone spurs acting up.

Far from home and family on the holiday, our soldiers can chortle at their commander-in-chief’s expense.

To share the laughs, just click.

Trump Budget Chief Can’t Explain Why GOP Blocked Military Pay During Shutdown

Trump Budget Chief Can’t Explain Why GOP Blocked Military Pay During Shutdown

Republicans have been backed into a corner for blocking military pay, and they have no good answers for why they’re harming the troops through their political gamesmanship.
Donald Trump’s budget chief Mick Mulvaney had no real answer when asked why the White House and Republican Party are blocking service members’ pay and benefits during the GOP-engineered shutdown of the federal government.

Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill introduced a resolution to ensure that military personnel continue to receive their pay during the shutdown, as President Obama had done during the Republican-led shutdown in 2013.

But that lie was exposed on Sunday morning when Mulvaney was confronted by Face the Nation host John Dickerson about comments he made during the 2013 shutdown, in which Mulvaney pointed out that “our troops are still being paid.”

“I have a much greater understanding of a shutdown now that I’m the O.M.B. director,” Mulvaney insisted, but then falsely implied that military pay was deferred in 2013, as it will likely be this time around.

But Dickerson wasn’t dissuaded. “Claire McCaskill … brought up a vote to pay them while the shutdown was going on,” Dickerson said, adding “That vote — Mitch McConnell didn’t bring that up for vote.”

“Why wouldn’t the White House, the executive branch, do everything they can to take care of the troops while this is being adjudicated?” Dickerson asked.

Mulvaney first tried to dodge the question by vaguely referring to other unrelated resolutions that were proposed Friday night into Saturday morning, but finally chalked the blocking of military pay by Republicans to “the sort of the dynamic flow in the Senate.”

Unfortunately, our troops can’t pay their bills with Mulvaney’s excuses.

All day long on Sunday, Trump officials like Mulvaney tried to escape the consequences of their shutdown, and time and again, those efforts were met with failure.

Hopefully, that failure will lead them to end this shutdown quickly, and stop holding Americans hostage to their destructive agenda.