The Guns of August: Trump's Plot to Steal the 2026 Election & Impose Dictatorship

Yoo-hoo Americans! Be aware that a curtain has fallen, that your rights will soon be stripped away and a dark future of repression and corruption awaits you. The time to act is now!

National Guard troops in DC are now galumphing around the Mall, Georgetown and other desolate war zone hotspots bearing M4 assault rifles and M17 pistols. The initial order to deploy troops in the capital unarmed was quickly reversed. For what possible reason do National Guard soldiers dodging between hot dog vendors and collecting trash need an assault rifle designed for close-quarter combat that can fire up to 950 rounds per minute and a 17-round rapid-fire sidearm, both of which saw service in Afghanistan and Iraq?

The answer is no good reason if the mission is to deter “crime” in a city with falling crime rates, but necessary if the real purpose is to violently quash protesters flooding the streets following a stolen election.

Having failed in pulling off a violent coup on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump is now pursuing a more methodical, carefully planned-out means of imposing one-man dictatorship. And he’s not hiding it.

Furthermore, time may be short. A manifestly delusional man, Trump nonetheless has to be aware that his health — mental and physical — is deteriorating and, at 79, the numbers of days to complete his coup are fewer. We hear his bombast, threats and bluster. At the same time, we watch him visibly decompose — swollen legs, shuffled gait, puffy eyes, incontinence, bursting blood vessels on his hands and his cognitive decline marked by incoherent speech and repeatedly losing his train of thought. He looks awful and ages at an accelerating pace under the unrelenting pressures of the presidency. A superannuated hyper-ambitious codger with one eye on the Nobel Prize and the other on the actuarial tables. So much to accomplish and so little time. And nothing is more dangerous than an evil old man with runaway ambitions.

The tried and true way for dictators to cement one-man rule is to first flood the zone with armed force; next to foment a phony crisis and then deploy a thug force along with troops to bash in the skulls of resistors. This is followed by a decree declaring “emergency measures” or martial law entailing the “suspension” of citizens’ rights and elimination of free and fair elections. This is the way Hitler consolidated his power. First, he built up and strategically deployed a thug force called Sturmabteilungen. Then he pulled off the Reichstag fire, followed by his Enabling Act which promptly dissolved the legislature and abolished civil rights. Trump has been prepping for many years. His first wife, Ivana, said that her husband kept a volume of Mein Kampf at his bedside for nighttime reading.

Donald Trump has no intention to leave office other than feet first. Should the Democrats win one or both chambers of Congress in 2026, he will face endless investigations and possibly a third impeachment, not to mention a halt or reversal of his draconian policies. The utter humiliation, moreover, would be unbearable for a malignant narcissist. The Supreme Court’s irresponsible ruling granting him immunity from the law likely negates legal indictments against him. His henchmen likewise have no intention of opening themselves up to indictments for their criminal behavior and end up occupying the prison cells that once held Erlichman, Haldeman, Mitchell and the other Watergate malefactors.

Therefore, what we are witnessing in real time is a methodical plot to ensure that Trump and his criminal conspirators never face justice. It goes further: they plan to end democratic government altogether.

While Americans go about their lives as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening, and as Democratic politicians stare at their navels doing nothing other than tsk-tsking, here is what the Trump regime is organizing:

• Prepositioning Forces in Democratic Cities: under the bogus guise of “fighting crime,” Trump is strategically placing federal law enforcement and National Guard units in Blue cities. Of course, “fighting crime” is just a pretext. As Illinois governor JB Pritzker pointed out, eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans — yet no federal forces are being deployed in those places. Moreover, crime rates have been falling significantly in Democrat-governed metropolises. Trump will not only leave these troops and agents in place indefinitely, but he will deploy more troops to more Blue cities, with Chicago and Baltimore next on the target list. Those occupying the District of Columbia will have the added duty, when the time comes, to enforce closure of Congress and the courts and go after politicians who stand up to Trump’s coup. Trump’s latest executive order also opens the door to deputizing street fighters like the Proud Boys for “security” roles — along with ICE, the president’s very own Sturmabteilungen. Trump’s E.O. further authorizes creation of a “Rapid Reaction Force” to assist “local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety and order whenever the circumstances necessitate.” How’s that for open-endedness?

  Progressive pundit Thom Hartmann notes that —

  It appears to be modeled almost exactly after the Rosgvardiya National Guard rapid reaction force Putin created in 2016 to put down anti-Putin and pro-Navalny protests; today the Rosgvardiya numbers over 600,000 men under arms. Putin probably told him about it in the car in Alaska, as this E.O. came right after that meeting.

• Voter Suppression: Trump signed an executive order that would bar states from using mail-in ballots and some voting machines — an ostensibly empty act given that the Constitution gives full control over elections to the states. This, on top of extreme gerrymandering, requiring proof of citizenship, eliminating voting stations in Blue areas, etc. is aimed at keeping as many Democrats as possible from casting their ballot. To further rig voting, he has put a notorious MAGA election denier in charge of “election integrity” at DHS. And Steve Bannon has floated the idea of posting ICE agents at voting stations. Think of it: masked toughs with no agency identification and answerable only to our deranged Duce looming over you as you approach a ballot post.

Again, Thom Hartmann:

Make no mistake: this is what Trump’s militarization of Blue cities is all about. If he can confiscate enough voting machines, refuse to count enough votes, intimidate enough voters, and disqualify enough mail-in ballots to invalidate Democratic majorities in a few dozen big cities, he can flip as many Blue states to Red as he wants. And keep the GOP in power forever.

A former government official high on Trump’s target list, outspoken whistleblower Miles Taylor, told PBS on August 27, “he is mounting a counterinsurgency against domestic political enemies.” The confected excuse for using violence was plainly enunciated by Trump hatchet man Stephen Miller when he described the Democratic Party “an extremist organization.” Slapping “extremist” on the somnolent Democrats provides the perfect excuse to “shoot them in the legs,” as Trump once urged his generals to do.

And, as always, Trump uninhibitedly blurts out that which intends to do. In the past week, he has said that he has “the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States” and “a lot of people would rather have a dictator. . . Most people say, ‘If you call him a dictator, if he stops crime, he can be whatever he wants.’”

Hello America! Yoo-hoo! As you gush over Taylor Swift’s engagement, debate whether the Dodgers or the Phillies will make it to the World Series, and decide when to take the kids to see The Bad Guys 2, be aware that a curtain has fallen, that your rights will soon be stripped away and a dark future of repression and corruption awaits you. We’ve already crossed the Rubicon, as pointed out by journalist (and my former editor at POLITICO) Garrett Graff:

The United States, just months before its 250th birthday as the world’s leading democracy, has tipped over the edge into authoritarianism and fascism. In the end, faster than I imagined possible, it did happen here. The precise moment when and where in recent weeks America crossed that invisible line from democracy into authoritarianism can and will be debated by future historians, but it’s clear that the line itself has been crossed.

There are increasing calls by concerned Americans, myself included, for citizens to mobilize themselves into a solid movement to counter what’s happening — not just more “No Kings Days,” but more organized, muscular and even disruptive. In my last essay, “We Need Another 1776!” I suggested modeling a potent, coordinated mass movement along the lines of the civil rights groups of the 1950s and 1960s and the Vietnam War protesters of fifty-plus years ago.

If we don’t do so now, then we must prepare ourselves, our children and grandchildren for a fascist future from which there may be no turning back.