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NBC News admits there’s a deep state and it’s plotting against Trump

January 15, 2024 | | Print Article

On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, NBC News has confirmed what many have long suspected: The deep state will stop at nothing to make America miserable again.

In an astonishing story filled with wild speculation and thinly veiled threats, NBC News openly admitted that, should Donald Trump win in 2024, there are already plans to ensure his second term will be fraught with violence, chaos, and frivolous lawsuits.

The outlet ominously reports:

Donald Trump is sparking fears among those who understand the inner workings of the Pentagon that he would convert the nonpartisan U.S. military into the muscular arm of his political agenda as he makes comments about dictatorship and devalues the checks and balances that underpin the nation’s two-century-old democracy.

A circle of appointees independent of Trump’s political operation steered him away from ideas that would have pushed the limits of presidential power in his last term, according to books they’ve written and testimony given to Congress. Most were gone by the end. In a new term, many former officials worry that Trump would instead surround himself with loyalists unwilling to say no.

The article links to another NBC News article that quotes Trump prosecutor James Pearce as saying, “Frankly, as I think Judge Pan’s hypothetical described, what kind of world are we living in if, as I understood my friend on the other side to say here, a president orders his SEAL team to assassinate a political rival and resigns for example, before an impeachment? Not a criminal act. President sells a pardon, resigns or is not impeached? Not a crime.”

Here’s how they framed it in the new one, titled, “Fears grow that Trump will use the military in ‘dictatorial ways’ if he returns to the White House”:

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Trump has raised fresh questions about his intentions if he regains power by putting forward a legal theory that a president would be free to do nearly anything with impunity — including assassinate political rivals — so long as Congress can’t muster the votes to impeach him and throw him out of office.

“Now, bracing for Trump’s potential return, a loose-knit network of public interest groups and lawmakers is quietly devising plans to try to foil any efforts to expand presidential power, which could include pressuring the military to cater to his political needs,” NBC continues. “Those taking part in the effort told NBC News they are studying Trump’s past actions and 2024 policy positions so that they will be ready if he wins in November. That involves preparing to take legal action and send letters to Trump appointees spelling out consequences they’d face if they undermine constitutional norms.”

“We’re already starting to put together a team to think through the most damaging types of things that he [Trump] might do so that we’re ready to bring lawsuits if we have to,” Mary McCord, executive director of the Institution for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law, told NBC.

According to its website, the group is a “non-partisan institute,” but a quick check on Influence Watch tells a different tale:

ICAP advised the Biden administration on proposals to radically restructure the Supreme Court of the United States and helped gain the release of Presidential records from the National Archives containing White House communications relating to the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. It also represented the 117th Congress’s House Judiciary Committee in its lawsuit to compel a former White House Counsel to testify regarding Trump-Russia collusion claims in the Mueller Report. 

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ICAP has also argued against cash bail, opposed Trump administration immigration policy, 5 defended illegal immigrants and the concept of sanctuary cities,  and called challenge laws for absentee voting a “threat to election integrity.”  In September 2022, ICAP received $150,000 from the left-of-center Ford Foundation for its Combatting Militias and Police Violence Initiative.

As for McCord, she “worked in the Obama administration Department of Justice as Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for National Security,” according to Influence Watch. “In 2021, she was appointed by then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as legal counsel for the House of Representatives Task Force January 6 Capitol Security Review.”

The other members of the “loose-knit network” are no better.

“Other participants include Democracy Forward, an organization that took the Trump administration to court more than 100 times during his administration, and Protect Democracy, an anti-authoritarian group,” NBC News reports.

Democracy Forward, according to Influence Watch, is a “a center-left litigation and advocacy nonprofit created in early 2017 by high-level Democratic Party operatives. … The DF board is chaired by Marc Elias, general counsel for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and head of the political law practice at Perkins Coie that represents almost all of the nation’s most powerful Democratic Party and left-leaning political advocacy organizations.” And, “United to Protect Democracy (often shortened to ‘Protect Democracy’) is a left-of-center litigation and advocacy organization created to oppose the policies of President Donald Trump.”

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NBC News goes on to explain that “Democratic lawmakers”  are seeking to change the Insurrection Act in an effort to prevent President Trump from being able to call in the military to protect American citizens should the left start burning down cities in protest of his election:

Wary of Trump’s staying power — he is running about even with President Joe Biden in the polls — Democratic lawmakers already known to be adversarial to Trump are working on a parallel track.

Among the least-understood tools available to a president is the Insurrection Act. Vaguely worded, it gives a president considerable discretion in deciding what constitutes an uprising and when it is OK to deploy active-duty military in response, experts say.

Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill worry that Trump might invoke the act to involve the armed forces in the face of domestic protests or if the midterm elections don’t go his way.

“There are an array of horrors that could result from Donald Trump’s unrestricted use of the Insurrection Act,” NBC quotes Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) as saying. “A malignantly motivated president could use it in a vast variety of dictatorial ways unless at some point the military itself resisted what they deemed to be an unlawful order. But that places a very heavy burden on the military.”

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On X, many were shocked by NBC’s report.

“Openly admitting that they are planning a military coup if Americans re-elect Donald Trump,” stated Greg Price. “All to protect democracy of course.”

“Y’all are literally describing the deep state,” the Hodgetwins wrote, “nice.”

“What beautifully soft framing for your article about how Democrats are plotting to have the military undermine the Constitution and civilian control,” remarked Mollie Ziegler.

“This is unreal,” wrote one X user. “How much more open do they need to get? Can anyone really deny the existence of the deep state anymore?”

Melissa Fine
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