Michael Flynn Can't Believe People Are Acting Like Martial Law Is Some Big Deal

He'd like us to all be more chill about Trump maybe using it to stay in office.

Trumpers across the internet cannot stop talking about the Insurrection Act! At least those who are still in denial that Trump lost the election ... which is most of them . The Insurrection Act gives the president the right to deploy the National Guard to quell civil unrest and rebellion on US soil. It has been invoked in the past in instances like Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion, labor disputes (on the side of management), leftwing protests like the 1968 Chicago riots, and to keep anti-segregation Southerners from preventing Black people from going to school.

Now that the Electoral College has officially declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election, Trump supporters would like Trump to use the Insurrection Act to stay in office, possibly forever. And it's not just, you know, random weirdos on the internet, either. It's also legislators like North Carolina state Sen. Bob Steinberg and Virginia gubernatorial hopeful state Sen. Amanda Chase .

One person who thinks this could be a swell idea is former National Security Advisor and QAnon teen dream Gen. Michael Flynn. In an appearance Thursday on Newsmax, Flynn outlined some ways Trump could stay in office and chided those who might think that Trump declaring martial law would be some kind of big deal.

Transcript via Media Matters:  

GREG KELLY (HOST): I hear some murmurings, you know about the staff shake-up at the Pentagon. They're putting people in place who might not be opposed to aggressive action and the President does have some options, at least on paper.

Can you tell us what those options are, and your opinion if he might take any of them?

MICHAEL FLYNN: Well I — you know, I don't know if he's going to take any of these options. I — I mean — the President has to — he has to plan for every eventuality because we cannot allow this election and the integrity of our election to go the way it is. I mean, this is just totally unsatisfactory. There's no way in the world that we are gonna be able to move forward as a nation with this.

So, the President has a — has a — I — I just mentioned one of the options. I mean, he could immediately, on his order, seize every single one of these machines around the country, on his order.

He could also order — he could order the — the — within the swing states, if he wanted to, he could take military capabilities, and he could place them in those states and basically re-run an election in each of those states.

I mean, it's not unprecedented. I mean these people out there talking about martial law, it's like it's something that we've never done. We've done — martial law has been instituted 64 — 64 times, Greg.

Yes, martial law has been instituted before. For two separate wars on Mormons, to prevent the Freedom Riders from coming to Alabama to challenge segregation laws, which were at that point federally illegal, to attack union workers in several mining wars, and, more reasonably, in the cases of the Great Chicago Fire and the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 (both of which I have been led to believe can be blamed on Mame ).

It has not, however, been used to keep a guy who lost an election in office. That would be unprecedented . It would also be unprecedented for him to seize the voting machines — not that it would matter if he did because no one stole the election from him — and it would also be unprecedented for him to force another election in all of the swing states that voted against him. These things would definitely be new!

That means that as much as he might like it, the majority of Americans who voted against Donald Trump are not just gonna lie back and think of England while he tries to deploy the military in order to stay in office forever. It's probably not going to go over too well.

Also hoping for some sweet, sweet martial law action is Steve Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, who went so far on Monday as to say that if Trump doesn't stay in office, it will be his fault that there will be a bloody civil war — in which, I assume, these "patriots" will murder all of us. For America.

Steve Rhodes, via RightWingWatch :

Through well-orchestrated mass vote fraud, the Communist Chinese and their domestic enemy allies are about to install their illegitimate puppet, Joe Biden, and his equally illegitimate puppet running mate, Kamala Harris, into the White House, with their treasonous fingers on the nuclear launch codes.

You must act NOW as a wartime President, pursuant to your oath to defend the Constitution, which is very similar to the oath all of us veterans swore. We are already in a fight. It's better to wage it with you as Commander-in-Chief than to have you comply with a fraudulent election, leave office, and leave the White House in the hands of illegitimate usurpers and Chinese puppets. Please don't do it. Do NOT concede, and do NOT wait until January 20, 2021. Strike now.

If you fail to act while you are still in office, we the people will have to fight a bloody civil war and revolution against these two illegitimate Communist China puppets, and their illegitimate regime, with all of the powers of the deep state behind them, with nominal command of all the might of our armed forces (though we fully expect many units or entire branches to refuse their orders and to fight against them) and with their foreign allies also joining in to assist in the suppression of American patriots.

Well, to be fair, we deserve it! After all, Biden's campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon did   call Republicans "fuckers." That is like ... basically the Pearl Harbor of hurting their feelings — Pearl Harbor being another instance in which martial law was declared. Coincidence? I think not. They have practically no choice but to start a war against us.

Rhodes is, of course, not happy about this — in November, at a rally, he lamented that "Us old vets and younger ones are going to end up having to kill these young kids ... And they're going to die believing they were fighting Nazis." — but he's gotta do what he's gotta do. Which is, I suppose, murdering us all. For freedom. And Donald Trump.

[ Media Matters ]

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