Trump Is the First U.S. President to Consider a Coup

“Never before in U.S. history has there been a record of a president discussing a military coup to stay in office. Is there any doubt that if Trump could find any active-duty generals willing to carry out this plot against America, he would give it the go-ahead? In this instance, all that is preserving the Constitution is the military’s fidelity to the rule of law.”

Max Boot

Trump Faults Barr’s Election Investigation

“He hasn’t done anything, so he hasn’t looked. When he looks he’ll see the kind of evidence that right now you are seeing in the Georgia senate. They are going through hearings right now in Georgia and they are finding tremendous volumes. So, they haven’t looked very hard. Which is a disappointment, to be honest with you, because it’s massive fraud.”

— President Trump expressing his disappointment in Attorney General Bill Barr for saying that the Justice Department had not uncovered evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, The Hill reports.

McEnany Won’t Say Trump Has Faith in Barr — Sure Sign Barr’s Time Is Short

“If we have any personnel announcements, I’ll let you know.”

— President Trump’s spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany refusing to say whether Trump still has faith in Attorney General William Barr, a day after Barr said there was no significant evidence to support the president’s claim that widespread ballot fraud led to his defeat by President-elect Joe Biden, CNBC reports.

Trump’s ‘Atavistic Scramble for Power’ Will Lead to More COVID-19 Deaths

“The fear is that Trump will be content with allowing the race to develop and distribute the vaccine to devolve into a global contest — and that poorer countries will be left behind in the rush to procure doses. In essence: that the president’s ‘America First’ view of world affairs as an atavistic scramble for power will lead to unnecessary suffering and death.”

Politico

Trump Slashed Staff at U.S. CDC Office in China

2/3

“The Trump administration cut staff by more than two-thirds at a key U.S. public health agency operating inside China, as part of a larger rollback of U.S.-funded health and science experts on the ground there leading up to the coronavirus outbreak,” Reuters reports. “Most of the reductions were made at the Beijing office of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and occurred over the past two years.”

White House Is Short-Staffed

80%

New York Times: “Some 80 percent of the senior positions in the White House below the cabinet level have turned over during President Trump’s administration, with about 500 people having departed since the inauguration. Mr. Trump is on his fourth chief of staff, his fourth national security adviser and his fifth secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. … Between Mr. Trump’s history of firing people and the choice by many career officials and political appointees to leave, he now finds himself with a government riddled with vacancies, acting department chiefs and, in some cases, leaders whose professional backgrounds do not easily match up to the task of managing a pandemic.”

Americans Should Be ‘Deeply Afraid’

“As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.”

— Retired Navy Admiral William McRaven — U.S. special forces commander from 2011 to 2014, including the 2011 SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden — writes in the Washington Post.