Generals aren’t selected by him personally though. Not unless congress completely folds to him. Remember one Senator holding up all of the promotions? That actually frees up military leadership to appoint replacements themselves. Within reason of course, they aren’t putting a private in charge of a brigade. But it does mean that with the tiniest bit of cover from Congress an officer corp loyal to the Constitution can block Trump’s agenda and make any purge take literal years to bear fruit. Not to complete it mind you, that will take even longer, just to cobble together enough of a chain of command to get a unit to actually deploy domestically.
That said the military are masters of malicious compliance. There’s a really big chance that resistance in the ranks looks like the generals ordering their troops out of the barracks but not taking any weapons because that would violate Posse Comitatus. Then fulfilling Trump’s orders by politely asking anyone they see for their papers. They wouldn’t arrest, detain, or chase anyone though, because that would be law enforcement and violate Posse Comitatus. They would of course studiously maintain an armed QRF on base just in case anyone finds the invasion of enemy aliens Trump is going to declare an emergency over. You might even see them get used against Cartels at the border in an attempt to appease Trump without clearly violating Posse Comitatus.
I do acknowledge it’s entirely possible the generals fold and put the onus on the lower ranks to ignore illegal orders. Which would destroy the military much faster as enlistments drop through the floor, stop loss is engaged, and desertion skyrockets.
Generals aren’t selected by him personally though. Not unless congress completely folds to him. Remember one Senator holding up all of the promotions? That actually frees up military leadership to appoint replacements themselves. Within reason of course, they aren’t putting a private in charge of a brigade. But it does mean that with the tiniest bit of cover from Congress an officer corp loyal to the Constitution can block Trump’s agenda and make any purge take literal years to bear fruit. Not to complete it mind you, that will take even longer, just to cobble together enough of a chain of command to get a unit to actually deploy domestically.
That said the military are masters of malicious compliance. There’s a really big chance that resistance in the ranks looks like the generals ordering their troops out of the barracks but not taking any weapons because that would violate Posse Comitatus. Then fulfilling Trump’s orders by politely asking anyone they see for their papers. They wouldn’t arrest, detain, or chase anyone though, because that would be law enforcement and violate Posse Comitatus. They would of course studiously maintain an armed QRF on base just in case anyone finds the invasion of enemy aliens Trump is going to declare an emergency over. You might even see them get used against Cartels at the border in an attempt to appease Trump without clearly violating Posse Comitatus.
I do acknowledge it’s entirely possible the generals fold and put the onus on the lower ranks to ignore illegal orders. Which would destroy the military much faster as enlistments drop through the floor, stop loss is engaged, and desertion skyrockets.