Trump allies consider martial law as White House implodes

David Pakman (0:00)

Coming up today, the allies of Trump are now openly talking about what about martial law if we don't like the results of the midterm elections that are just days away. These aren't random Internet trolls. These are people with access to Trump, access to the White House, saying, what about martial law? Now, meanwhile, the Trump administration is descending into chaos. Aids are turning on each other. People are maneuvering for power and they are right to be worried about what's coming in November. In an extraordinary development, Trump is now protecting Putin from sanctions while he abandons Ukraine. We are taking the side of the dictator plus Vice President JD. Vance, reminding us why they try to keep him out of the public light with a series of disastrous answers. And Mike Johnson seems to realize he's about to get fired as speaker of the House. Plus, new video of Donald Trump wandering around in a way that raises even more questions about his physical and mental condition. Folks, we've got our one day membership drive tomorrow. Make sure you're on my Substack newsletter at substack.davidpakman.com.

What a show we have for you today.

They are talking about martial law. This is not a drill. This is not a practice. This is the real thing. Donald Trump's allies are now openly discussing imposing martial law if they don't get the results they like in the forthcoming midterm election. We are talking about potentially putting the military in charge of civilian affairs, about suspending normal civilian authority. That's what martial law means. And about using military force in circumstances where normally you would have civilian government and law enforcement. And the people talking about this are not just random anonymous accounts on Twitter. These are people who have actually met with Donald Trump, who have access to the White House. And they are now saying, how do we respond if we don't like the results in November, which they almost certainly are not going to like? This is where the whole Trump's an authoritarian thing becomes very real. It's not bluster. It's not stuff he posts to Truth Central. It is the implementation of it. And authoritarianism, as we've talked about with experts over the last many years, it doesn't show up with a president announcing, I am now the dictator and democracy is now over. It is a gradual process of normalizing things that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier. Does that ring a bell for anybody as what we're experiencing right now? And right now, we are normalizing discussions of martial law in response to an election. Axios has a new report titled Trump's MAGA allies openly discuss martial law. And the reporting says that there are election activists associated with MAGA who held a video conference on September 30th. And they talked about what they say is going to be widespread election fraud in November. We've still never had widespread election fraud in this country, but they're really sure it's going to happen this time. And of course, they're sure about it before the election has even taken place. There's no evidence that it's going to be rigged unless they are rigging it. But regardless, they are preparing to claim that it was rigged. Now one of the people on this call was Peter Tickton. He's a childhood friend of Trump's and an attorney for Tina Peters. Now remember, Tina Peters is the former Colorado election official who was convicted of crimes connected to a breach of election equipment after 2020 She was involved in trying to steal Colorado.

And the connection to Trump is that Peters and Tickton went and visited Trump at the White House in June. Peters met with Trump again more recently. And during this video call on September 30th, Tickton said there would have to be martial law in the event of another supposedly rigged election. And he told Axios, ballots and election equipment might might need to be commandeered and seized. Now, there was another activist on the call, Gregory Stenstrom, who said, we may we may want to. What if we pause the entire election over supposed security concerns or Trump could invoke emergency powers to force states to change election procedures, which, by the way, actual election experts we've spoken to say, yeah, they can't really do that. So let's kind of summarize and understand what's being discussed here. An election will take place. Republicans won't like the outcome and they might say there was fraud.

And instead of accepting the results and pursuing legitimate legal challenges, which, by the way, even if you're wrong, you can pursue a legitimate legal challenge like that. We wouldn't go and say, that's illegal. There are legitimate ways to challenge an election. And if they genuinely lost, then that will be the result. And if there was genuinely a problem, then we would figure it out. What they want to do is have Trump as president intervene using extraordinary powers. And Trump is not allowed to do that legally. The president, as we've no matter what they say, a president cannot unilaterally postpone congressional elections. States run those elections. A president cannot declare martial law and use that to suddenly take over state election systems. We still have the Constitution. Emergency powers don't erase that. And it's important to understand that as of right now, Trump hasn't approved any of these proposals. They have just said, listen, we care about election security. We've got to count legal votes, but we know what they're up to. Now look at the broader picture. Heather Honey, apparently her real name, promoted claims about the 2020 election. She is now a senior election integrity specialist at Homeland Security. That's terrifying. Peter Navarro keeps pushing these allegations of widespread fraud from 2020 inside Trump's administration. And now that we are two weeks from this election, people who have access to Trump are saying, what about martial law, even though we are not even at the election yet? One of the central dangers of authoritarian politics is elections are only legitimate if you win them. If you lose them, suddenly it's an emergency. The normal rules aren't good enough. You need extraordinary powers. And the remarkable thing is that they're open about this. We should distinguish between what Trump's allies want and what Trump has decided he's going to do. We don't know yet if Trump will try to impose martial law. But when you have people with access to Trump who is very easy to sway, Trump usually goes with whatever the last person said before he got a camera turned on in front of him and Mike stuffed in front of his mouth. Trump is very swayable. And if the people around him are talking about this stuff, that is terrifying. The question is not does Trump have the legal authority to do these things? He doesn't. The question is, if he attempts them, are there institutions out there responsible for forcing limits? Are there states out there? Are there governors and attorneys general and secretaries of state who would say, hey, you know what? Trump said we should do this. Let's try to do it, even if that is not what the law allows. So we've got a big push on the left. Let's get people registered and make sure they know their plan for voting. Let's get lawyers in place. Should there be spurious legal challenges? We're doing all of that stuff. Genuinely, two weeks out, the best defense against any of this stuff is a victory so big that no rigging would be possible. It has to be so overwhelming that if they start going, well, 11000 votes in this count, it wouldn't make a difference because we won by hundreds of thousands of votes. We won by millions of votes. That is the best protection. The best protection is beating them very, very badly. And what is now happening in parallel to the plans around what may happen on November 3rd is that a power struggle is growing as magas start to realize we might be about to lose and we should discuss that. New reporting is that inside Donald Trump's White House, there are implosions taking place and a massive power struggle. And the most incredible and kind of interesting part is they haven't even lost the midterms yet. They're almost certainly going to lose the House. We'll see about the Senate. They're going to lose some governorships, I hope. But they are not even there yet. And they're already fighting over who gets to take over when things go badly. And you've got people maneuvering to replace Trump's chief of staff, Susie Wiles. There's the idea that Stephen Miller might take that role. Trump is reportedly furious with all of his own advisors. He should be. And everybody seems to be trying to figure out who do we blame for the election. The election hasn't even happened yet. Now, there's something almost comical about this because, remember, this was supposed to be Trump 2.0. This is a more disciplined Trump. Everyone knows their roles and what they're doing. There won't be infighting. There won't be firings. There won't be constant chaos. That didn't last very long. Trump's new press secretary, Katie Zachariah, was fired after five days. We have people struggling for power in order to take new positions after what seemed like some inevitable losses coming on November 3rd. And the Washington Post has this report called Power Struggle erupts in the White House. They spoke to 20 people. They spoke to White House staffers and advisors, people close to Trump. A Trump ally said it's the wild, wild west in the White House. And Suzy Wiles, Trump's current chief of staff, is at the center of a lot of this. Now, there are different views about Suzy. There are those who view Suzy Wiles as bringing a degree of order to the Trump White House chief of staff, except as we all look around, we see that there is no order. So we say, well, maybe she's not doing that that effectively. But the speculation is after Republicans at least lose the House in November, she's going to be leaving. Now, she hasn't announced she's leaving. She hasn't been fired. Nothing like that. But the belief is she will be leaving. And who wants her job? Stephen Miller reportedly wants it and is positioning himself for it. Lee Zeldin is another person who seems to want it. Bill Poulty wants it. Now, I think the Bill Poulty part of this is remarkable. According to the Washington Post report, Poulty has been bringing giant poster boards onto Air Force One and Marine One and even onto the golf course to pitch Trump on ideas. And sometimes he puts pictures of Trump on the poster boards. So he seems to know how to get Trump's attention. And apparently, Trump has complained there are so many poster boards. The White House residents is now cluttered with them. Imagine that you're trying to become chief of staff. You're trying to convince Trump that you're the guy to do it. So you bring in bigger and bigger pictures of Trump, absurd imagery. But there is a real power struggle that's happening here. Trump reportedly brought in Katie Zachariah, the failed press secretary, without even talking to Susie Wiles. It's plausible that Susie Wiles would have said, that's not a good idea. And it seems as though Trump not consulting Susie Wiles is him undermining her and suggesting he doesn't really care about her council anymore. And at the same time, Trump's been calling people outside of his circle because he's worried my circle may not be giving me the most accurate information. Why aren't people defending me aggressively enough? And he's reportedly been complaining about the people running his midterm strategy, which he should be because if they are saying go out and campaign for all these people in places you're unpopular, it's a very bad strategy. And so the people advising him are caught up in all sorts of controversy.