Woodward Book Claim: General Mattis Plotted To Overthrow U.S. Government
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It was shocking to learn recently that, while gaming out post-contested-election scenarios, Democrats considered the possibility that the military may intervene and choose the president. But now comes a claim indicating that the scenario wasn’t at all far-fetched.

At issue is little-noticed information in Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward’s soon-to-be-released anti-Trump book. To wit, the Post provides this pre-released excerpt: “[Defense Secretary James] Mattis quietly went to Washington National Cathedral to pray about his concern for the nation’s fate under Trump’s command and, according to Woodward, told Coats, ‘There may come a time when we have to take collective action’ since Trump is ‘dangerous. He’s unfit.’”

“What do you call a conversation between the Defense Secretary and the head of the U.S. intelligence apparatus where they are talking about taking ‘collective action’ to remove an elected President?” asks the Conservative Treehouse rhetorically. “That’s called sedition…. A seditious conspiracy.”

If Woodward’s information and the Treehouse’s analysis are accurate — and it’s hard escaping the latter’s conclusion — this is a far, far more serious issue than what the media fixate on: Woodward’s refutable claim that President Trump mishandled the China virus.

And, regardless, as commentator Andrea Widburg puts it, “There is something very wrong with some in the top ranks of America’s military.”

Relevant here is that Barack Obama’s promised “fundamental change” has infected everything. In fact, it “began to be clear last October that the Obama administration (with some help from Bill Clinton’s presidency) had seeded the Pentagon with leftist generals whose allegiance was to the Deep State, to cultural leftism, and to the infamous and profitable ‘military industrial complex’ that Eisenhower warned about in 1961,” Widburg explains.

“In only five years, Obama had conducted a major Pentagon purge, firing almost 200 senior officers who held the old-fashioned belief that the military exists to protect America and should not be a social justice institution with limited firepower,” she continues. “The upper-level officers who remained were hardcore Democrats.”

Why Trump didn’t effect his own purge is a good question. But it’s par for the course: Leftists clean house upon taking power, eliminating anyone not on board with their agenda. Conservatives are just that — conservative, as in defensive — and are reluctant to overturn a status quo (and, aww, we don’t want anyone “losing his job,” right? Ponder here where nice guys tend to finish….)

Also note, an apparent Trump weakness is that the president doesn’t judge well the character of those close to him (Exhibit A: Omarosa Manigault Newman). Perhaps if conservatives accepted radio host Michael Savage’s observation, “Liberalism is a mental disorder” (it’s philosophical/moral dysfunction, really), their hiring decisions would be wiser.

Regardless, the military’s transformation has yielded the previously unthinkable: Armed forces that, in these United States, may defy their commander-in-chief. As Michael Anton wrote last Friday in “The Coming Coup?”:

It started with the military brass quietly indicating that the troops should not follow a presidential order. They were bolstered by many former generals — including President Trump’s own first Secretary of Defense [Mattis] — who stated openly what the brass would only hint at. Then, as nationwide riots really got rolling in early June, the sitting Secretary of Defense himself all but publicly told the president not to invoke the Insurrection Act. His implicit message was: “Mr. President, don’t tell us to do that, because we won’t, and you know what happens after that.”

Anton also points out that the leaked report about the aforementioned post-election-scenario exercise “darkly concluded that ‘technocratic solutions, courts, and reliance on elites observing norms are not the answer here.’”

What is? The Democrats’ “plan in the event Trump wins in a given state is to send their Democrat electors to the Electoral College along with (or even in lieu of) the Republican electors,” Widburg claims. “In the chaos that results, which will spill onto the streets, Democrats trust ‘that the military would take care of the rest.’”

“Anton also says that retired military officers, such as the ones [Widburg discusses in her article] … have already said that they will support a coup,” she continues.

Some may call this an exaggerated fear, but what’s fact is that the military brass “transformation” has birthed a “cultural coup” within the armed forces. Fox News host Tucker Carlson discussed this — intra-military social-engineering involving leftist indoctrination with toxic ideas such as anti-white “Critical Race Theory” — on his show’s Tuesday edition (video below).

So what’s the method to this madness? People can have varying motivations and, to some extent, it’s just leftists being leftists. But among the most Machiavellian there’s a darker motive:

“It’s about capturing the U.S. military for the political left,” as Carlson puts it.

It’s working, too. While the armed forces had long been a Republican bastion, a recent Military Times poll showed that, shockingly, Joe Biden leads Trump among active-duty military members.

When pondering leftists’ efforts to capture the military, consider that this relates to why Democrats want to “dismantle” the police, an entity still largely conservative. As I wrote in early June, “Certain leftists want to eliminate the police because they want to become the police.”

Now note that the Left already has long controlled the culture shapers — academia, the media, entertainment (and, increasingly, big business) — which can influence what people think tomorrow. You can’t completely cast off the Constitution and control the population today, however, without first controlling the military and police.

Of course, these all could just be unfounded fears. But I wouldn’t want to bet my civilization on it.

Photo: AP Images

Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.