A Military Loyal to Trump

Radio Atlantic

The Atlantic

News, Society & Culture, Politics

4.3 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How easily could a reelected President Trump bend the military to his will? We talk to Tom Nichols, a staff writer at The Atlantic who taught military officers for 25 years, about this dangerous step in establishing a dictatorship. He explains how close Trump came to achieving these goals in his last term and how surprisingly few effective checks are in place. And Nichols talks about his personal nightmare scenario. Want to share unlimited access to The Atlantic with your loved ones? Give a gift today at theatlantic.com/podgift. For a limited time, select new subscriptions will come with the bold Atlantic tote bag as a free holiday bonus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Last Tuesday during a town hall on Fox News, Sean Hannity asked Donald Trump the question, straightforwardly.
0:15.0	Do you in any way have any plans whatsoever if reelected president to abuse power, to break the president to abuse power to break the law to use the government to go
0:26.2	after people. Now, Hannity is friendly to Trump. So this seemed like a question that was supposed to quiet some worries.
0:35.0	Because lately, Trump and his allies have been sending a lot of strong dictator-like signals,
0:41.0	saying they would, quote, come after or crush people who are unfriendly
0:45.8	to them or disloyal but Trump didn't treat it like a softball and the exchange
0:50.4	continued you are promising America tonight. You would never
0:54.7	abuse power as retribution against anybody. Except for day one. Except for day one.
1:03.0	And Trump was not done.
1:05.0	We love this guy.
1:07.0	He says, you're not going to be a dictator, are you?
1:09.0	I said, no, no, no, no, other than day one.
1:12.0	If you ask people who study how dictators rise,
1:17.0	they'll often say that would-be dictators don't hide their intentions.
1:21.0	It's just that the people they're talking to fail to take them seriously
1:25.6	until it's too late, which honestly makes a whole lot of sense to me.
1:31.2	Because I have read about the many recent dictator-like statements by candidate Trump,
1:36.7	and yet I experience them like I'm watching a movie about the rise of a dictator,
1:41.6	somewhere else, or like in some other time, not right now in
1:46.2	the country I actually live in.
1:49.5	But I want to take this more seriously.
1:52.0	I'm Hannah Rosen and in this episode of Radio Atlantic
	...

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