No, MyPillow guy, the military can’t save Trump. That’s ‘flat out mentally ill.’
Last month, it was a small-town Texas judge calling for a coup to overthrow the U.S. government.
“HAMMER TIME!!!!!” Hood County Justice of the Peace Dub Gillum, who has promoted the QAnon conspiracy fantasy, posted on Facebook: “Ready for the Insurrection Act. Bring In the Military.”
Two weeks ago, it was a Frisco pastor.
Brandon Burden of KingdomLife, host of a recent state Republican Party rally, told his church, “Yahweh will bring a miracle” and to prepare for a “military tribunal” keeping President Donald Trump in office.
Yet even after the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, the idea of an overthrow, coup and martial law was laughed off as a giant QAnon hoax that spread like kudzu on Facebook.
Until Friday.
Then the chief executive of Minnesota-based MyPillow went to the White House carrying notes that read: “Insurrection Act now ... martial law if necessary.”
According to news reports, Trump didn’t listen to My Pillow’s Mike Lindell. (Lindell said he got the notes from someone else.)
But the very idea of a coup and military overthrow left the nation’s law professors saying, “Not again.”
“I can’t even figure out what theory they are using,” said professor emeritus Lynne H. Rambo of Texas A&M School of Law in Fort Worth, the school’s expert on executive authority.
The federal law allows activating the military to enforce laws during rebellions, disturbances or disasters.
Not to overturn an election already upheld repeatedly by judges and lawmakers, many of them Republicans.
“I am very, very surprised that there is a significant number of people who are this detached from reality,” she said.
“It’s just flat out mentally ill.”
Professor Steve Vladeck of the University of Texas School of Law in Austin is considered an expert on the Insurrection Act.
“Listen,” he wrote on Twitter, “ — if you’re going to stage a coup, secretly invoke the Insurrection Act, and declare martial law, who *better* to conspire with than the MyPillow guy?!?”
Later, he wrote that no matter what orders Trump gives, his presidency will end Wednesday at noon under the Constitution
“We seem to have forgotten not just basic civics,” Vladeck wrote by email, “but also basic principles of what it means to be part of a democratic society in which ‘our side’ doesn’t always win — and in which we’re governed by laws, not opinions.”
“Those who believe the Insurrection Act can reverse an election are “either deluding themselves or being repeatedly lied to,” he wrote.
One of the nation’s top experts on homeland security law is retired Brig. Gen. Michael C.H. McDaniel of Cooley Law School at Western Michigan University in Lansing.
He said: “The only insurrection I see was on January 6 when [Trump] caused an insurrection at the Capitol.”
Even if Trump tried to declare an insurrection, McDaniel said, “First, the military would ask for clarification. Then, they’d ask for advice from their legal representatives. They’d have to look at the legal grounds.”
Let’s just say the military’s response would be slow.
Say, later than noon Wednesday.
