Naively I'll ask:
When do we start getting scared?
I'm reaching the end of just being, concerned.
Is Trump really looking to pull off a coup?
Or is all this just buying him time to do… god knows what.
Hard to say. In my book it's ok to prepare effective resistance against a coup and still keep trying to laugh Trump offstage at the same time. I'm no military strategist but I've stepped in to run a household full of kids now and then in my time.
Keep 'em off balance always worked for me.
The competing theory to the one about a coup though is that the Trump guys just need time to finish covering up a lot of sh^t, which seems plausible enough. Shredding and fabricating, hand in glove...
It may be hard for Biden to piece together what all has transpired in the past four years that was not made public or on which they will "forget" to brief him now.
Still there are people who know stuff. You can't unmake the past, even if you call it by some other name or tear up the authorizations or fire the people who were supposed to paste the pieces back together.
More concerning perhaps is Trump plugging these Nunes-circle people into Dept of Defense, they are loyalists who had somehow* managed to make it onto his ever changing National Security Council and so now may be difficult to dislodge from the high echelons over at Defense. Are they there just to be eyes and ears (and leakers to Trump allies in or out of US government) or are they put there now to deter future inquiries from within about what happened on Trump's watch?
*if Kushner can skate on clearance issues then anyone can, if a loyalist.
So.. a potential internal threat to the USA's interests, or just Trump giving the finger to Biden on his way out? Biden will decide... and go find some fine print or have legal counsel justify rollbacks of whatever Trump's doing at DoD right now.
What goes around comes around should be on coffee mugs of the GOP for the next four years except in the probably only narrowed-margin bailiwick of McConnell's Senate. But even there does Mitch imagine the Democrats will not adopt the tactic of appointing "Acting..," chiefs and deputies if push comes to shove on agency-level confirmations?
By time this century reaches the half mark, every little principality on the planet will know how EOs work in the American government, and what the arcane rules are that allow the US Senate to run the Congress, the courts and the executive branch (and agencies) of this country. Trivia game gold.