'Stupidity through blind arrogance': Columnist blasts Tommy Tuberville as Trump’s 'useful idiot'
A Guardian columnist is arguing that Senator Tommy Tuberville's (R-Alabama) ongoing blockade of US military leadership nominees is less about the senator's personal stances on abortion, and more about former President Donald Trump's authoritarian agenda if elected to a second term.
In his most recent column dubbed "Tommy Tuberville is not acting: he really is Trump's useful idiot," author Sidney Blumenthal delved into the underlying motivations behind Tuberville's months-long obstruction of military promotions that critics argue is harming national security and US military readiness. Sen. Tuberville — who prefers to be addressed as "coach" in reference to his former job as a college football coach — has so far refused to lift his hold on several hundred military confirmations in protest of a Pentagon policy that pays for the travel costs of service members who have to go out of state to get abortion care following the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade last year.
Blumenthal made the case that it isn't just about abortion: Rather, he writes that Alabama's senior US senator is acting out a role as a tool in Trump's box to remake the entire federal government into an entity whose sole purpose is to serve his aims.
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"Idiots can still be useful idiots," Blumenthal wrote. "There are larger purposes involved in his scam kulturkampf. His subversion of the military is not just collateral damage. It is not the unintended consequence, but the overriding motive. His abortion ban is both context and pretext. Tuberville has opened Trump’s strategy for a second term to replace the professional class of officers pledged to the constitution with a collection of flunkies who will salute his command, legal or not."
"Tuberville is a blunt instrument, but, however crude, he is the available tool," he added.
Blumenthal's theory about Trump isn't too far-fetched, given Republicans' stated aims. The Heritage Foundation — one of the foremost right-wing think tanks in Washington, DC — is promoting an agenda dubbed "Project 2025" that aims to return Donald Trump to the White House, in which the former president will use his second term to fire roughly 50,000 federal workers and replace them with MAGA loyalists. This includes replacing top military and intelligence officials, like the ones who resisted his plans to subvert democracy on January 6, with ones who would allow him to utilize the Insurrection Act to deploy US military forces against protesters.
"One obscure aspect of Trump’s coup was his foiled attempt to place his loyalists within the CIA and the Pentagon," Blumenthal wrote. "He was resisted by the CIA director Gina Haspel, the secretary of defense Mark Esper and chairman of the joint chiefs, General Mark Milley. Trump had come into the presidency thinking of the senior military as 'my generals', a personal palace guard, but one by one he forced them out... He has been especially hostile to former chairman of the joint chiefs, Milley, who resisted Trump’s idea to bomb Iran after he lost the election to foster a crisis before the electoral college vote on January 6. 'If you do this, you’re gonna have a fucking war,' Milley told him."
READ MORE: Tuberville snaps at claims his military blockade led to Marine commander's heart attack: 'Come on!'
Tuberville's blockade of US military nominees could soon come to an end, however, as Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona) has worked for months to convince enough of his Republican colleagues to bypass him. Senate Democrats can confirm the nominees if nine Republicans join them.
