Alabama Extreme MAGAt Tommy Tuberville Makes His Debut On The National Stage

Senate Equivalent To Marjorie Traitor Greene?

Democrats’ most popular foil— short of Trump— has been Marjorie Traitor Greene, a gift that has kept on giving, more so than Gym Jordan, Lauren Boebert, Mike Pence or any of their clowns. But… that could be changing a little. Biden, who has had his fun with Traitor Greene seems to be moving on to Alabama Republican coup plotter Tommy Tuberville.

Friday night, Matt Viser, Dan Lamothe and Abigail Hauslohner reported that “Biden is sharply escalating his criticism of Tuberville, highlighting his blockade of military nominations and using him to criticize other right-wing Republicans he characterizes as extreme, obstructionist and willing to jeopardize the country’s national security. Biden, who has often cited Republicans outside the congressional leadership as emblematic of what he calls their party’s radicalism, warned in harsher tones and with more specificity this week that Tuberville is undermining the servicemen and women who are putting their lives at risk. ‘Something dangerous is happening,’ Biden said Thursday night, speaking at the Truman Civil Rights Symposium. ‘The Republican Party used to always support the military, but today, they are undermining the military. The senior senator from Alabama, who claims to support our troops, is now blocking more than 300 military [nominations] with his extreme political agenda.’”

For months, Tuberville has refused to let the Senate approve any senior military nominations by unanimous consent unless the Defense Department changes its policy of providing travel expenses for service women seeking an abortion. The policy is a backdoor way for the Pentagon to facilitate even late-term abortions, Tuberville argues, saying last week on the Senate floor that “anyone who calls themselves pro-life needs to stand up and be counted right now.”

Biden, arguing that Tuberville is holding America’s military readiness hostage to an ideological agenda, has targeted Tuberville with growing frequency in recent weeks, mentioning him at fundraisers and in economic addresses and tweets. He often highlights the impact of Tuberville’s blockade in general terms, but on Thursday night got more specific.

The president noted that Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., an F-16 pilot and the first African American to lead any branch of the Armed Services, will become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff if Tuberville lifts his hold. Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the second woman in the Navy to achieve the rank of four-star admiral, would make history as the first woman as chief of naval operations.

…Tuberville’s hold has taken on increasing significance in the military, where the promotions of more than 250 generals and admirals are currently on hold. If Tuberville does not release his hold, the number of stalled military promotions is expected to rise to more than 650 by the end of the year as additional officers are identified for elevation but are unable to step into new jobs because of the blockade.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin cast the hold this month as a readiness issue that “creates friction throughout the entire chain” and “disadvantages families,” including children whose transfer to new school districts may be affected. “I would imagine our adversaries would look at something like this and be pretty happy that we create this kind of turbulence within our force,” Austin said.

Among the institutions directly affected are the Marine Corps, whose top officer, Gen. David Berger, retired this month. Biden has nominated Gen. Eric Smith, the Corps’ assistant commandant, to take the top job, but Smith is for now serving in an acting capacity, effectively doing his current and prospective jobs at the same time.

…Tuberville has found himself in the midst of other controversies as well. Earlier this month, he appeared to be advocating for white nationalists to serve in the military, denying they were racist and characterizing them on CNN as people with “a few probably different beliefs.” He later retracted that statement.

Democrats have hammered Tuberville with increasing ferocity, accusing him of betraying America’s military, subjecting service members to undue hardship and putting the country’s security at risk. Some of his colleagues have sought to convince Tuberville to allow an up-or-down vote on changing the Pentagon’s policy, but he would probably lose such a vote, and has refused to go along.

Tuberville is taking advantage of a senator’s right to object to any presidential nomination, which forces the chamber to hold a drawn-out confirmation procedure that can take several hours. Each military nomination receives a total of three hours of debate on the floor and, with hundreds of nominations pending, that would tie up the Senate for weeks or months.

“Yes, every senator has enormous power,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said on the Senate floor earlier this week. “I could probably block the defense bill this week if I wanted to. But I won’t. And you know why? Because I’m not a maniac.”

…[A]s of late, Tuberville has become the go-to antagonist for Biden. His criticisms are largely rooted in the senator’s blockade of military nominations, but they also extend to Tuberville’s reluctance to denounce white nationalists and his position on Biden’s economic legislation.

In an economic speech in Chicago in June, the president made the sign of a cross as he described how Tuberville had voted against a Biden-backed bill but then boasted about an Alabama project that the bill funded.

During a news conference in Helsinki earlier this month, he called the senator’s position on military holds “ridiculous.” On another occasion, Biden referred to him as “a former coach of a winning football team” or, less charitably, as “the former football coach from Alabama, who was a better coach than he’s a senator.”

“What Senator Tuberville is doing is not only wrong— it is dangerous,” he said in a statement.

The White House has even distributed memos on Tuberville’s positions, and the senator’s name comes up frequently during White House press briefings.

In another era, Biden might have prided himself on being able to work with a senator like Tuberville. During his 36-year career in the senate, Biden often boasted of being able to do business with senators from the South, at times remarking on how Delaware had some similarities with their states.

“I’d be willing to talk to him if I thought there was any possibility of him changing this ridiculous position he has. He’s jeopardizing U.S. security by what he’s doing,” Biden said in Helsinki. “I don’t ever recall that happening, ever. … I mean, I’m confident that the mainstream Republican Party no longer— does not support what he’s doing. But they’ve got to stand up and be counted. That’s how it ends.”

Thom Hartmann went so far as to suggest that Tuberville has all those promotions on hold so that Trump can fill them with fascists. “After all,” he wrote yesterday, “it was one part of the military (the Secretary of Defense) that first helped Trump nearly assassinate Mike Pence and thus end American democracy, but then another part of the military (the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs) that apparently stopped him from finally succeeding. It looks like the billionaires who control the MAGA movement have learned from January 6th and won’t make the mistake of having an independent military, FBI, press, or Department of Justice again.”

Back on December 16, 2020— six weeks after Trump lost the election but three weeks before the vote would be certified by Vice President Pence and Congress— Donald Trump put down on paper his plan to have the US military seize control of the nation.

It would have been America’s first military coup.

His executive order laid out his mobilization of the Army to seize voting machines across the nation and confront anybody who protested with lethal force. It starts:

“By the authority vested in me as President of the United States pursuant to the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, … I, Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, find that the forensic report of the Antrim County, Michigan voting machines, released December 13, 2020, and other evidence submitted to me in support of this order, provide probable cause sufficient to require action under the authorities cited above because of evidence of international and foreign interference in the November 3, 2020, election.”

The next half-dozen paragraphs cite a long list of claims that purport to prove the election was stolen from Trump. For example:

“Dominion Voting Systems and related companies are owned or heavily controlled and influenced by foreign agents, countries, and interests. The forensic report prepared by experts found that ‘the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results. The system intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors. The intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency, and no audit trail. This leads to voter or election fraud.’”

And then he gets to the military part:

“Accordingly, I hereby order: (1) Effective immediately, the Secretary of Defense shall seize, collect, retain and analyze all machines, equipment, electronically stored information, and material records required for retention under United States Code Title 42, Sections 1974-1974(e), including but not limited to those identified in footnote 1. The Secretary of Defense has discretion to determine the interdiction of national critical infrastructure supporting federal elections.”

This Executive Order, if it had been instituted, would have probably led to the immediate takeover of America by the military.

“National critical infrastructure” could be broadly interpreted to include our highways and airports— as these are used to transport ballots and voting machines— as well as seizing control of the internet, which is referenced at length in one of the paragraphs “documenting” the stolen election:

“The report found the election management system to be wrought with unacceptable and unlawful vulnerabilities––including access to the internet–– probable cause to find evidence of fraud, and numerous malicious actions. … In fact, there is probable cause to find a massive cyber-attack by foreign interests on our crucial national infrastructure surrounding our election––not the least of which was the hacking of the voter registration system by Iran.”

So, why didn’t Trump execute his Executive Order? Right now, nobody knows for sure, but a reasonable speculation is that Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley told him that he’d refuse the orders if given by Trump’s acting Secretary of Defense, Chris Miller, and his Chief of Staff, Kash Patel.

That would certainly account for why Trump has been showing such open hatred for Milley. He may well have been the one man blocking Trump’s plan to militarize the nation and remain in office during the “state of emergency” resulting from the “proof” they expected to find or manufacture once they’d seized the swing states’ voting machines.

Acting Secretary of Defense, Chris Miller, would definitely not be the man who stood up to Trump that month. In fact, he gave the order that left the Capitol unprotected even as every police and security agency in the federal government (and anybody with a Facebook or Twitter account) knew there could be bloodshed coming.

Just three weeks later, on January 4th, Acting Defense Secretary Miller, in the effective role of commander of our entire military just one step below Commander-in-Chief Trump (on whose behalf he acted), issued a memo (attached at the end of this article) specifically directing Army Secretary McCarthy and the National Guard that for January 6th and just for January 6th they were:

• Not authorized to be issued weapons, ammunition, bayonets, batons, or ballistic protection equipment such as helmets and body armor.

• Not to interact physically with protestors, except when necessary in self-defense or defense of others.

• Not to employ any riot control agents.

• Not to share equipment with law enforcement agencies.

• Not authorized to use Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets or to conduct ISR or Incident, Awareness, and Assessment activities in assistance to Capitol Police.

• Not allowed to employ helicopters or any other air assets.

• Not to conduct searches, seizures, arrests, or other similar direct law enforcement activity.

• Not authorized to seek support from any non-DC National Guard units.

If this isn’t bad enough, on January 6th itself— as armed traitors were attacking police and searching to “hang Mike Pence”— Chris Miller oversaw a mid-afternoon, mid-riot conference call in which Army Secretary McCarthy was again begging for authority to immediately bring in the National Guard.

Then-Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations General Charles Flynn, the brother of convicted/pardoned foreign agent General Michael Flynn (who had been pushing Trump to declare martial law and seize voting machines nationwide) was on the call; both the Pentagon and the Army, NBC News reported, lied to the press, Congress, and, apparently, to the Biden administration about his presence on that call for almost a year.

It wasn’t until December that it was widely reported that the National Security Council’s Colonel Earl Matthews (who was also on the call) wrote a memo calling both Charles Flynn and Lt. Gen Walter Piatt, the Director of Army Staff, “absolute and unmitigated liars” for their testimony to Congress in which they both denied they’d argued to withhold the National Guard on January 6th.

Months later, America discovered that the phones and text messages of most of the group, including Chris Miller, Walter Piatt, Kash Patel and Ryan McCarthy, were all wiped of all conversations they had on and leading up to January 6th.

ICE’s senior command, whose plainclothes agents were sent by Trump to Portland to beat up and kidnap protesters off the street and used, essentially, as his private militia was also instructed by the Trump Administration to wipe all their phones after January 6th.

So, if Trump or a similar MAGA-type Republican were to take the White House in the 2024 election, it makes sense that their first efforts would be directed toward seizing fuller control of the senior levels of the military command structure than Trump had during his last weeks in office in 2021.

And, no doubt just by coincidence, Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville is, at this moment, holding open hundreds of senior military positions in a fashion similar to the way Mitch McConnell held Merrick Garland’s seat on the Supreme Court open for well over a year before Trump took office in 2017.

That would be the Senator Tuberville whose hometown newspaper printed pictures showing him in Trump’s private residence the evening of January 5th, 2021, at what appears to be a planning session just hours before the Capitol was invaded.

As the Alabama Political Reporter newspaper reported at the time:

“The night before the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville and the then-director of the Republican Attorneys General Association met with then-President Donald Trump’s sons and close advisers, according to a social media post by a Nebraska Republican who at the time was a Trump administration appointee. “Charles W. Herbster, who was then the national chairman of the Agriculture and Rural Advisory Committee in Trump’s administration, in a Facebook post at 8:33 p.m. on Jan. 5 said that he was standing ‘in the private residence of the President at Trump International with the following patriots who are joining me in a battle for justice and truth.’ … “Among the attendees, according to Herbster’s post, were Tuberville, former RAGA director Adam Piper, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, adviser Peter Navarro, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and 2016 deputy campaign manager David Bossie.”

Tuberville has denied to the press that he was at the meeting, but the Alabama Political Reporter noted not only the pictures of him there but also reprinted Facebook and Instagram posts from others who attended citing Tuberville as being part of this particular war room event planning for January 6th.

One, a rightwing tech CEO named Daniel Beck, even wrote on Instagram just before midnight January 5th (with a picture at the hotel) that he’d just:

“[S]pent the evening with Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle, Tommy Tuberville, Michael J. Lindell, Peter Navarro, and Rudy Giuliani. We talked about the elections, illegal votes, court cases, the republics’ status, what to expect on the hill tomorrow. TRUMP WILL RETAIN THE PRESIDENCY!!!”

The billionaires behind the MAGA movement aren’t just working hard to get Trump or another MAGA-type Republican elected next year; they’ve also laid out a detailed plan to end the independence of the FBI, the FCC, and the Federal Reserve. They call it Project 2025 and it’s already been publicly rolled out by the billionaire-founded and -supported Heritage Foundation.

Combined with the power of the US military, the FCC could shut down most opposition radio, TV, podcasts, and websites in days. The Federal Reserve could seize or freeze banking assets of people and organizations the new Republican administration considers disloyal.

In this, the GOP would be following a nearly identical game-plan played out in the 1930s by Hitler and Mussolini, and in the past decade by both Putin and Orbán.

In all four of those countries it was the morbidly rich who supported the authoritarian takeovers; they believed their interests would be best served by autocracy and oligarchy instead of democracy.

For a while they were right, too— until the leaders turned on them. Thyssen fled Germany to save his and his family’s life; hundreds of other industrialists weren’t so fortunate. Russian billionaires are today falling out of windows with startling frequency.

Ever since five Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized political bribery, pitting the full power of billionaire money against our system of government, we have been inexorably moving toward this moment in history.

The 2024 election will determine the direction this country takes, perhaps for another century.

Will we turn to fascism and authoritarianism with a military takeover, as a handful of activist rightwing billionaires and their wholly-owned Republican politicians want? Or will we turn back toward democracy and rebuild America’s middle class that has been so battered and gutted by 42 years of neoliberal Reaganomics?

To the extent that our institutions are still intact, that decision will be in your hands and those of people like you.