Trump is in deep trouble. Look at the photo. Those are the 800 generals and admirals Hegseth and Trump summoned from all over the world to meet together and be admonished. Look at their faces. They are angry.
Hegseth called them weak, unmanly and fat. He told them they would have compulsory physicals every six months and would be fired if they were overweight.
Trump spoke next. He arrived twenty minutes late and nobody clapped. He said it was the most silent room he had ever been in. He told them to applaud. No one applauded. Those senior officers sat and listened to the silence. No one applauded.
They now all know where they stand.
No authoritarian right winger insults all their senior generals and admirals together. Pinochet did not do it. Putin doesn’t do it. Modi would not dream of it. Mussolini did not do it. Netanyahu hasn’t done it. Hitler never did it. It’s mad.
Trump cannot have a coup if all the generals and admirals have learned that they all hate you. And with luck this means this road to a dictatorship is closed to Trump.
Dictatorships of the right or left depend on the support of armed forces. There have been times in history when a revolution from below by the soldiers and sailors removed the generals. Yet this is not what Trump is looking for.
But is he really banking on the armed anarchy of MAGA to keep him in power? Do they have the discipline or the weaponry? It is now extremely unlikely that the generals would now stand by and allow a successful MAGA insurrection.
And if the roads to dictatorship are closed, then Trump will not be able to cancel the results of a mid-term or presidential election. Well, maybe a very close election. But nothing bigger.
Trump and Hegseth set out to humiliate the generals. But this has backfired. There are deep questions of values, loyalties and military aims here. Trump is openly trying to reduce the role of the US armed forces overseas, and focus them on controlling the streets of the United States.
Yet, since 1939 the core job of the American armed forces has been to enforce American power around the world. For the American officers, the informal empire is not a burden. It is their duty. Trump does not just want to scrap that, he wants to set the military against the people of the United States – their own families and communities, the cities where many of them live.
He wants, in particular, to set the army and the marines against the Black and Latino people of America. Yet the American armed forces roughly reflect the ethnic population of the country, which means that one third of them are black or speak Spanish. The proportion of Black and Spanish speaking people in the combat troops of the army is much larger.
We can imagine circumstances in which the generals might decide to occupy the country to prevent revolution or civil war. But they now know that they will not work as a united military to do this for Trump. This does not mean they will refuse to deploy. It does mean that almost certainly, after the first major massacre, they will turn against Trump publicly.
Trump’s person also violates the generals’ and admirals’ deeply held values. Trump is a racist, undisciplined, disorderly and chaotic. And since the experience of Vietnam, the military has been the least racist major institution in the United States. It is a professional military, and they need not to turn their soldiers against each other.
And notice – this extraordinary meeting was called when Trump’s power is falling, not rising. On the domestic front, the defiance of the late night hosts put Jimmy Kimmel back in his job. That mattered because it said to everyone who had been pre-compliant with Trump that resistance is possible.
More important, the economy is stuck. Ordinary people are not getting what they were promised. The tariffs are not helping. The jobs are not coming. The federal government is closing down today.
And there are the Epstein files. It is a testament to the human spirit that women abused when they were girls have led a storm that threatens not just Trump, but Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Ehud Barac and so many more.
Moreover, Trump is losing control in the world. When the tariffs first came in, other countries seemed be giving in. But the moment when Modi in India failed to comply was crucial.
Modi turned publicly to China. And now the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and fifteen other countries) are publicly united against Trump – and his tariffs. We will see how this plays out. But these are the governments of 55% of the population of the world.
The tide is turning against Israel too. The boycotts are rolling in at increasing speed. Almost any imaginable ending to the Samud flotilla mission will isolate Israel further.
Israel will probably deepen and extend the genocide now. But in the medium term the isolation of Israel will grow, and the future of that economy and that state is bleak.
Biden and now Trump have tied American power to Israel. The moment when Trump’s domestic and international problems came crashing together when Trump spoke at the UN and people laughed at his evident pique and madness.
Then, when Netanyahu spoke, almost all the seats were emptied by a walkout of the diplomats of the world. If you look at the photos, the only people you see are in the seats at the back reserved for the audience, not at the front for the delegates.
That was Gaza.
Trump saw that. In the long run any talks about Gaza that involve Jared Kushner or Tony Blair are likely to be a disaster for Trump, though not before there is a further great loss of Palestinian lives.
None of this means that all will now be peace and justice in America or the world. As Netanyahu feels his isolation, his reaction will be wider and deeper death.
And as the far right begin to lose their grip in the United States, we can expect more and more vigilante massacres. Trump, Hegseth and Vance will spiral.
There is much cruelty and mourning to come. The moment we are entering will call on many of us to be brave. But this is the week that Trump’s power has begun to break.
