Clowns

 The unprecedented gathering of America's top military officers in one place to listen to Fox News Personality Pete Hegseth engendered legitimate fears about either an impending stupid war or some sort of military coup or purge. Aspiring authoritarians - and Hegseth and Trump are cut from that same cloth - need loyalty in the national security apparatus, and the worry was that this would be the first step in creating those conditions.

Didn't quite turn out that way.

As Richardson notes, Trump in particular was lost when speaking to a room full of people who do not respond the way his rally goers or even protestors respond. While Hegseth's vile and stupid remarks are worthy of their own post, the focus really needs to be on Trump. Hegseth is a clown. All those generals and admirals know This Guy. He's the reservist who thinks he's Rambo. Pretty sure Hegseth does not have his Combat Infantry Badge. Generals and Admirals are pretty smart people; most if not all have graduate degrees. Their job is to study actual war, not war movies - which is apparently what Hegseth does.

Trump, however, is the Commander in Chief. Hegseth's primary danger is the sort of incompetence that we saw with the Signal Chat fiasco last spring. Trump's danger is to the constitutional order that every soldier takes an oath to defend. It feels close to inevitable that at some point, they will be asked to forswear that oath in favor of one for Trump.

I think yesterday actually worked against that. Trump had prepared remarks that were likely written or molded by Stephen Miller: the typical American Carnage and the need to destroy domestic enemies. In case you need access to Richardson's post and don't have it, let me cut and paste some of Trump's remarks:

“They looked at (Biden) falling downstairs every day. Every day, the guy is falling downstairs. He said, It’s not our President. We can’t have it. I’m very careful. You know, when I walk downstairs for, like, a month, stairs, like these stairs, I’m very—I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall, because it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy. We don’t want that. You walk nice and easy. You’re not having—you don’t have to set any record. Be cool. Be cool when you walk down, but don’t—don’t pop down the stairs. So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a President, but he would bop down those stairs. I’ve never seen it. Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop. He’d go down the stairs. Wouldn’t hold on. I said, It’s great. I don’t want to do it. I guess I could do it. But eventually, bad things are going to happen, and it only takes once. But he did a lousy job as president. A year ago, we were a dead country. We were dead. This country was going to hell.”

What the actual fuck?

The thing is, he looks and sounds like shit, especially since he disappeared for a few days around Labor Day. So, let's say you might be a senior military leader who is torn between his oath to defend the Constitution and the chain of command. Do you really want to bet it all on this idiot who is decaying in front of your eyes? Similar to his rambling weird speech to the United Nations, these aren't rallies; these are very smart, observant people. Forced to stay in their seats for this verbal diarrhea do you really think they came out of that ridiculous, unnecessary confab thinking; "This guy's got it on lockdown"?

As we head into a government shutdown, the whole thing rests on the fragile ego of a demented old fool. Sadly, I think the best hope we have is that he is, in fact, a demented old fool. This is why the cretinous fascists like Miller are rushing to destroy what they can of America. The clock seems to be ticking. 

UPDATE: Tom Nichols makes roughly the same point.

UPDATE 2: This is a telling line from Hegseth: “It all starts with physical fitness and appearance,” Hegseth said. “I don’t want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape or in combat units with females who can’t meet the same combat-arms physical standards as men.” Sure, yeah, the sexism. But the focus on superficial appearance is befitting an administration that just wants to look good on Fox rather than do the actual job.