In the video above, especially starting at the 7:00 minute mark, The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur makes the case that president Trump's recent moves to fire former Defense Secretary Mike Esper and even more recently, to fire 11 of 13 members of the little known Defense Policy Board (DPB), may be a prelude to a coup to retain power.
Uygur quickly eliminates the possibility that Trump is just doing taking this completely unprecedented step in the post-election waning weeks of his presidency to either:
A. Make Joe Biden's job as hard as possible when Biden becomes president, or
B. Because there's some policy that Trump wants to solidify before leaving office.
While A is certainly true, in Trump's mind, it is "if Biden becomes president," not "when." As for 'B,' Uygur literally laughs that off, correctly in my opinion, because Trump doesn't care about policy, especially when he would no longer be in office.
This leaves option 'C' which is that Trump somehow expects his hand-picked Acting Defense Secretary, Christopher C. Miller will allow him to use the military to retain power. The obscure-until-now DPB would then be packed with Trump loyalists who would then construct some fig leaf policy as to why the military has to forcibly retain Trump as president. Of course, Uygur is sane, and like any sane person, he expects the Generals to tell Trump to "go f&*( himself" (his words) if he tried that. But Trump has fired many Generals too, and now has his counter-terrorism head as Defense Secretary, an odd choice for head of an outwardly focused military. Terrorism is a homeland threat, not a battlefield threat, primarily.
Before going further, take a look at the now mostly former members of the DPB:
The (mostly) former member of the formerly obscure Defense Policy Board
(Image by U.S. Department of Defense) Details DMCA
Hardly a bunch of Left Wing radicals. The only ones remaining are: Paula Dobriansky, David McCormick, and James Talent.
And what does the DPB do? Among other things, its full charter states (emphasis added):
4. Description of Duties: The Board shall focus on: (a) issues central to strategic Department of Defense (DoD) planning; (b) policy implications of U.S. force structure and force modernization on DoD's ability to execute U.S. defense strategy; (c) U.S. regional defense policies; and (d) any other topics raised by the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, or the USD(P).
"Any other topics raised by the Secretary of Defense..." whom Trump just replaced. Does the coup justification have to be spelled out any better than that?
Foreign Policy reports: "As part of long-considered changes, we can confirm that several members of the Department's Defense Policy Board have been removed," a defense official said." But the timing and scale of replacements is very suspicious, especially for a president who continues to deny he lost the election, and who is still claiming fraud on a daily basis.
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