The Military Coup in Front of Our Eyes

A military coup is occurring in the United States.

Most are unaware because no shots have been fired but make no mistake the military is now near fully in charge of the White House.

President Donald Trump, the buffoonish man lacking in political savvy and historical perspective and who is infatuated with the military, is for all practical purposes a useful-idiot front man at this point. The gate keeper sitting outside his office, Major General John F. Kelly, is in charge.

Politico reports:

When new White House chief of staff John Kelly huddled with senior staff on his first day at work, he outlined a key problem in President Donald Trump’s White House that he planned to fix: bad information getting into the president’s hands.

Kelly told the staff that information needed to flow through him — whether on paper or in briefings — because the president would make better decisions if given good information.

Bad information? What can this mean other than information the General doesn't want the President to see?

Politico continues:

Since starting this week, Kelly has told aides that anyone briefing the president needs to show him the information first. The Trump West Wing tradition of aides dropping off articles on the president’s desk — then waiting for him to react, with a screaming phone call or a hastily scheduled staff meeting, must stop. He will not accept aides walking into the Oval Office and telling the president information without permission — or without the information being vetted.

You have to be blind not to understand the General is in charge. "Pick from option A or B, Donald," the General will say.

Meanwhile, National Security Adviser Lt. General H.R. McMaster is taking out any Trump loyalists who may provide the President with a perspective different than that of the military.

From The Atlantic:

A top official of the National Security Council was fired last month after arguing in a memo that President Trump is under sustained attack from subversive forces both within and outside the government who are deploying Maoist tactics to defeat President Trump’s nationalist agenda.

His dismissal marks the latest victory by National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in the ongoing war within Trump’s White House between those who believe that the president is under threat from dark forces plotting to undermine him, and those like McMaster who dismiss this as conspiratorial thinking.

Rich Higgins, a former Pentagon official who served in the NSC’s strategic-planning office as a director for strategic planning, was let go on July 21. Higgins’s memo describes supposed domestic and international threats to Trump’s presidency, including globalists, bankers, the “deep state,” and Islamists. The memo characterizes the Russia story as a plot to sabotage Trump’s nationalist agenda. It asserts that globalists and Islamists are seeking to destroy America. The memo also includes a set of recommendations, arguing that the problem constitutes a national-security priority...

Since Higgins’s removal, there have been further changes inside the council. McMaster fired Derek Harvey, the senior director for the Middle East, last week... 

In addition to Harvey and Higgins, former Breitbart writer Tera Dahl recently left the NSC. The moves suggest an ongoing struggle within the Trump White House over the nature of the threats facing the United States, and how to address them.

At the same time, (via Breitbart) McMaster allowed former President Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice to maintain her security clearance to access classified information — despite reservations Trump had about her motives.

McMaster sent an official letter to Rice informing her that she would maintain unfettered access to classified information.

The president was not aware of his actions, according to two senior White House officials and an intelligence official, reports Breitbart,

It should be noted that Rice has access despite an ongoing investigation into her activities in reportedly unmasking Trump officials’ conversations with Russia during the presidential transition.

The New York Times reports on another McMaster firing and this tells you who really is in charge now:

 On Wednesday, his third day on the job, he delivered a message about respecting chains of command, backing the decision of Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, to dismiss Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a Kushner ally and staff member on the National Security Council. It was a move Mr. Kushner and Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, had long opposed, according to two administration officials.

And get a load of this:

He listens in on conversations between cabinet secretaries and the president. He has booted lingering staff members out of high-level meetings, and ordered the doors of the Oval Office closed to discourage strays. ...

“Several times I’ve been on phone conversations with the president over the last couple of days and General Kelly has been on those conversations as well,” Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters on Thursday when asked if Mr. Kelly was making a mark.

What can we expect with Kelly in charge? This anecdote reported by NYT from the period when Kelly was the Secretary of Homeland Security might provide some insight:

 In closed-door meetings with House members in March, Democrats questioned Mr. Kelly about aggressive immigration sweeps at churches and hospitals. The frustration grew as Mr. Kelly disputed that such sweeps were happening, even in the face of enlarged photos showing a Homeland Security vehicle parked on the grounds of Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif.

I have no idea what the military has in store for us but we are about to find out.  Kelly is going to keep control of all access to the President.

The limited non-Kelly access will only occur when the cultural-Marxist wing of the Trump administration gets to see him privately away from the White House like this:

Leaving dinner at the White House with @EricTrump and @LaraLeaTrump. Thank you dad! pic.twitter.com/x3xWswOOWo

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) August 3, 2017

But during working hours, even the family cultural Marxist wing will have limited access to the Oval Office. From NYT:

 In discussions with Mr. Trump about moving to the White House, Mr. Kelly also insisted that Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump, who is also a White House adviser, report to him. They both agreed...

 -RW

UPDATE

From Axios AM:

For his personal legal team, Trump hired John Dowd, a renowned Washington lawyer who was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps and a member of the Judge Advocate General Corps.

UPDATE 2

SEE: Another Trump Loyalist Whacked