By Patrick
The US public, the US media and the GOP-candidates finally start to take Donald Trump more seriously, but is it too late? Bill Maher and his guests explored this question in a fascinating conversation, which is well worth watching. Bill Maher states that "Donald Trump is like climate change - We knew it was coming, we didn't do anything about it, and now it's too late." The website "Mediaite" also published the following clip.
Watch:
Also, in this clip, one of his guests asks whether Bill Maher really believes if Marco Rubio would be a better president than Donald Trump. In his reply, Bill Maher sort of "denies" that Rubio would be better, but at this point I have to "pull a Scalia" and strongly voice my dissent: Yes, Marco Rubio would be indeed a much, much better President than Donald Trump, because he is not an insane and unhinged fascist. Which, however, does not mean that Rubio would be a good President!
Today, a very interesting conversation that Bill Maher had with retired former four-star general and former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden made headlines. There is a very good reason that this conversation gets quite a lot of attention, because what Michael Hayden said was indeed quite "explosive."
The "Wall Street Journal" reports:
WASHINGTON – Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, who recently led the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, said the U.S. military would likely refuse to follow certain orders from Donald Trump if he is elected to the White House in November and follows through on campaign promises.
“I would be incredibly concerned if a President Trump governed in a way that was consistent with the language that Candidate Trump expressed during the campaign,” Gen. Hayden said during an interview will Bill Maher on Friday.
Mr. Trump, the frontrunner in the GOP primary, has vowed to use torture techniques against suspected terrorists if he wins the White House, going beyond waterboarding and doing things he described as a “hell of a lot worse.”
He has also suggested he would order U.S. forces to kill the family members of terrorists, a charge that some have alleged would be in violation of the Geneva Convention.
Gen. Hayden, who had been an adviser to the presidential campaign of Jeb Bush, said the military would be required to refuse to obey these orders if Mr. Trump handed them down from the White House.
“You are required not to follow an unlawful order,” Gen. Hayden said. Some of Mr. Trump’s proposals “would be in violation of all the international laws of armed conflict.”
Watch:
This statement by Michael Hayden did not come as a surprise to me, as I assume that many, if not most members of the military establishment will have similar thoughts. These are soldiers who were educated according to the values of the Western world, and the pure thought that a US President would make gross violations of the Geneva Convention like gruesome torture and summary executions (and potentially even worse) his "official policy" will certainly give some people in the military sleepless nights.
These are people who also studied closely how for example the German Army was abused by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, how professional soldiers, who were in many cases even opposed to the Nazis, fulfilled the demands of a ruthless dictator over and over again and openly resisted only when it was too late.
I do not believe that the US military would allow such a thing to happen in their own country.
Finally, as so often, some cartoons about Donald Trump. He just provides too much material...
Have a good weekend, everybody!
Finally, the last cartoon is particularly remarkable, because it is from 2015, and I think some of these predictions already came true...
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