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Trump Creating a Praetorian Guard?
“Trump wants to create his own Praetorian Guard, an armed force that answers only to him,” posted Tom Nichols, a staff writer at the Atlantic. “That has never ended well either for the military or for the civilians.”
Tom Nichols displays a couple of major errors in this brief quote. First, he misunderstands the historical role of the Praetorian Guard. The Roman emperor did not own the Praetorian Guard; rather, the Guard owned the emperor. You only wind up with a Praetorian Guard in the metaphorical sense when the senior officers of the military choose and control the president.
Second, Nichols is confused about the constitutional role of the president as commander-in-chief. He is concerned that the armed forces would only answer to the president. But this is exactly what the Constitution demands. He should have considered Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution and he might have avoided displaying his ignorance:
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States
Nichols has the situation exactly reversed. We have been close to getting a Praetorian Guard of senior military officers and an intelligence deep state, but Trump is re-taking control of both, hopefully before it has reached a critical state.
Published in Military
https://youtu.be/GF91mtLpQi8?t=11
The Roman emperor did not own the Praetorian Guard, rather the Guard owned the emperor.
Tom Nichols just got owned!
Hush now. You can’t doubt Tom Nichols. He’s an expert! He wrote a book about how the problems of this country are due to us not listening to experts like Tom Nichols.
So there.
One of the more humorous aspects of the first 45 days is the degree to which anti-Trump hysterics have been forced to beclown themselves to come up with something–anything!–to criticize the man.
It never fails to shock leftists when Donald Trump conducts himself as if he were President of the United States.
It’s been a long, long time between real presidencies.
The Praetorian Guard was whoever ran the country when Biden was in the White House.
That would be Obama’s Praetorian Guard.
Now that USAID is shut down, they’ll all have to go out and get real jobs, instead of running NGOs powered by government money.
That was going to be my comment.
Reframe: an opportunity for Tom to slim down.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Emperor Augustus created the Praetorian Guard as a personal bodyguard, sort of a Secret Service. But it later became powerful enough that it was choosing and controlling emperors itself.
I think the modern equivalent in the United States is more like the administrative state. It was originally created to run the administrative machinery, but later became the government, even to the point of deciding who should and should not be president, and controlling their actions.
Same idiocy as the Dem that worried the shrinking administrative state would be too weak to oppose Trump.
Roman officials during the Republic had bodyguards known as lictors. They would clear the path of the official when they went out in public, and if the official summoned someone to their presence, it was the lictors that went out and nabbed them. Generals had larger bodyguards. By the time of the Second Triumvirate, these bodyguards were the size of cohorts (400-500 soldiers) or multiple cohorts. Augustus did formalize the relationship. As time went on, the power of the Praetorians became so great that they did pick the emperors. They executed Pertinax for being stingy with their annual bonuses and jerking them around on some of their other perks. After that, they took bids, and Didius Julianus made the winning bid. He lasted three months.
Well said.
Thanks for the good explanation – that is exactly what I was trying to say, but you were much clearer.
The American “Praetorian Guard” tried and failed to influence the 2016 election, but it created endless trouble for Trump 1.0 with the Mueller investigation, Russian collusion hoax, that Vindman scoundrel and the first impeachment, and on and on.
They did influence the 2020 election with the Biden laptop letter, whether it was a factor or the factor that decided the election, the covid restrictions, and mail-in balloting.
They tried to influence the 2024 election with lawfare against Trump and failed. So they have meddled in three consecutive elections. If we don’t destroy the Deep State now, we will wind up with a Praetorian Guard that does control the presidency, just as the Praetorian Guard controlled the Roman emperors.
That’s a great history in brief. Didn’t the Praetorian Guard murder multiple emperors?
Caligula was assassinated by Praetorian tribunes and centurions. Nero was abandoned by his guards, and ended up ordering his secretary to kill him outside of Rome at a villa because he lacked the nerve to do it himself.
It was a progression that kicked off the moment Rome “evolved” from a Republic to an Empire. The Tribune’s power was legitimized by the will and vote of the people. The Emperor’s power started as an expression of the popular will, but inevitably came to be legitimized by his control of the Praetorian Guard. From that point it was inevitable that the Guard itself would become the real source of power, and the emperor subordinate to the will of the Guard.