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“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.
Discussion (18)
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The Roman emperor did not own the Praetorian Guard, rather the Guard owned the emperor.
Tom Nichols just got owned!
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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.
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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.
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It never fails to shock leftists when Donald Trump conducts himself as if he were President of the United States.
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