A retired Army brigadier general made bizarre, unsubstantiated claims about supporters of former President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election during an interview Saturday with CNN.
Retired Gen. Steven M. Anderson told CNN’s Pamela Brown that he sees a potential coup attempt after the presidential election in 2024, without offering any real validation for his view.
“There’s a threat within,” Anderson, whose career was spent primarily in logistics, not combat commands, told Brown. “We’ve got some people that just haven’t been educated.
“They haven’t been found out, and they’ve grown in power, through perhaps inaction on the parts of some of our key leaders,” he continued.
Anderson went on to suggest a scenario where Trump and his supporters may try to claim victory even if he loses next time around, a remark that appears to indicate the powers that be will declare Trump the loser no matter what.
“What we can do now, identify those people, get them out of our ranks, and train the rest of the force on civics 101, about how our country is supposed to work, how elections work,” the retired one-star said.
“Stop listening to the pillow guy and start learning about our country and how it’s actually supposed to run,” he added, an apparent reference to Trump ally and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell.
“Really quickly, just walk us through your concern about this partisan divide and how it could impact the chain of command, and why that is so concerning to you in terms of preventing another coup attempt potentially in 2024,” the host said.
“Well, the big problem here is allegiance to the Constitution, versus allegiance to a leader. Or in this case, a cult-like figure like Trump,” he said. “There’s a lot of people in uniform that are confused about that. They think the president is something like a king, and it’s not.”
“You know, we swore an oath to the Constitution. That’s how our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines need to act.
“And you know we’re concerned that there’s so much activity within the military that shows that people are ignorant of what our Constitution is really all about, and they have responded to people like Trump, and when he tells them to jump, they’re probably willing to do that,” he added.