"Mainstream media continues to
underestimate Trump's threat. Republicans want us to worry more about
the precedent Milley set rather than the precedent Trump set, which is
that Republicans can cry 'fraud' when they don't win elections (even in fucking California) and those baseless claims can justify overturning the results. [snip]
"Trump is actively removing the guardrails that prevented him from overturning last year's presidential election. 'Winning' Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan would've guaranteed Trump a second term. When the guardrails break, what should decent people do? According to Milley's critics ... nothing. These aren't just the disingenuous claims from Republican bad actors but otherwise respectable Americans who are concerned about 'precedent.' However, we can reasonably trust that Milley would faithfully serve an honest president, but no future election could ever be honest enough to prevent Trump from stealing it. That's the active threat that most demands our attention." -- Stephen Robinson, Wonkette, referencing revelations in the Woodward/Costas book "Peril," and expressing the frustration we feel when we see the media using Republican talking points to concern troll about "civilian control" of the military, when we know who the specific, deranged "civilian" was that Milley feared was out of control. They're not only underestimating Trump's ongoing threat, they're actively promoting the Republican narrative that's distracting from the real scandal here -- proof of Trump's unprecedented abuse of power and coup plotting. WTF?!?
__________________
"For the better part of the past two days I’ve been watching people – some smart, some earnest, and a lot who are disingenuous – freak out that GEN Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has somehow single handedly destroyed over 240 years of civilian control of the US military. He hasn’t. The feeding frenzy, however, will continue because it provides the political reporters, the pundits and commenters, Republican elected officials, conservative movement leaders, and conservative news and social media elites what they want the most: the opportunity to make Woodward and Costa’s reporting about anything that is not how deranged Trump might have actually been between October 2020 and January 2021; just how badly he and his political appointees had degraded, warped, and twisted the Federal government over their four years in office; and just how craven, anti-American, anti-republican, and anti-democratic the Republican Party and the conservative movement and news and media systems that sustain the party have become to allow this to happen..." -- Adam Silverman, Balloon Juice, amplifying the media's scandal deflection problem. Excellent explainer.
