The Senate dare not disagree. After all, he claims to have a mandate to do whatever he wants to do with the country. Of course, Homer Donald, you did not win a mandate....
Putin can more or less honestly claim he had an electoral mandate. Hitler eventually did have an electoral mandate. Trump insists that he also has a mandate. Of all his many lies this may be the most egregious. With his claiming a mandate he is justifying everything he intends to do to drastically change the way the country is governed. 
The words above jumped out when I saw them in the Salon article 
This is from a Pew 2020 poll: "Most Americans don’t see Trump as religious; fewer than half say they think he’s Christian."
Here are more of the images that came up when I looked for Trump and Hegseth hugging. Note that none of the hands look right. Bottom right is closest to real but Trump's fingers a too long. I dediced to look into this and found a couple of articles.
In the process of staffing his government prior to taking office he is facing his first test. He is getting minimal, but significant, pushback from enough Republicans in the Senate to stop some of his nominations. This gets me to the following:
Trump ushers in a Christian "deep state": MAGA moves to gut the Constitution.
I don't see the danger of the United States being governed by something like a Taliban with nukes and 3,400 fighter/jets, even though we see articles like another article in Salon:
How Christofascists became the heart of the MAGA movement
The reason I take issue with this is shown in the photo above. The two people flanking Trump may be Christofascists, but Trump is only a transactional Christofacist. He's no Mullah
Hibatullah Akhundzada.
As long as Trump is president, Christian Nationalism will not be as dominant as people like Hegseth and others in the movement want it to be. Trump is basically a transactional person in all ways and I have little doubt that he is an atheist. He fakes being religious, but what anybody with any sense knows what he is really thinking when he's posing for pictures with religious leading praying over him especially if he hasn't had lunch yet.
This is from a Pew 2020 poll: "Most Americans don’t see Trump as religious; fewer than half say they think he’s Christian."
There are no indications that Trump has any kind of religious faith. Whether or not Trump stays in office until he dies the presumed next in line to lead the nation as president, or by then the position may have another name, is J.D. Vance. My impression is that he's as transactional as Trump and when it comes to Christian Nationalism. I think his views are more nuanced. He went from being an athiest to an orthodox Catholic. Read the following:
J.D. Vance Used to Be an Atheist. What He Believes Now Is Telling.
He’s not an evangelical Christian. He’s a Catholic—of a very specific type.
It may be especially relevant that Vance is married to a Hindu.
Where does this leave the country? If we are not on the brink of becoming a Christofascist country we are well on the road to becoming a fascist country of a type unique to America. Fascism is simply defined as an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government. For us to become truly fascist Trump has to geld Congress.
What we have in common with nascent fascist regimes is that the rising dictator plans to centralize power under the leader and turn any elected governing body into a ceremonial rubber stamp for public consumption. For example Wiki tells us the following:
Greater German Reichstag (German: Großdeutscher Reichstag) after 1938, was the national parliament of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. Following the Nazi seizure of power and the enactment of the Enabling Act of 1933, it functioned purely as a rubber stamp for the actions of Adolf Hitler's dictatorship — always by unanimous consent — and as a forum to listen to Hitler's speeches. In this purely ceremonial role, the Reichstag convened only 20 times, the last on 26 April 1942. The President of the Reichstag (Reichstagspräsident) throughout this period was Hermann Göring.
Likewise Wiki tells us that the Russian Federal Assembly since the 2003 elections, the Federal Assembly (of Russia) has been referred to by analysts and observers as being a rubber stamp institution.
What all countries that turned into fascist regimes have in common is that they had a military to back them. Trump needs Hegseth to make sure, or try to make sure, that the military does his will. If Trump has to pray with Hegseth and say it is God's will to obey his commands he will do it.
So far Trump is only on the verge of ignoring what Congress, particularly the Senate, may do to thwart his plans. He's a psychopathic megalomanic and doesn't tolerate people who stand up to him. It remains to be seen whether he'll play the democracy game if some of his nominees don't get approved by the Senate.
I have no doubt he has advisors like stone-cold sociopath Steve Miller who will explain to him that as president he has incredible power and shouldn't put off using it and take the first step to neutering Congress by doing what he can to force them into recess to make his appointments. If he can't manage to pull this off I can see him going full bore dictator and declaring a national emergency and initiating martial law. He couldn't get his crowd to do it, but now could order soldiers to shut down the US Capitol.
This would be the final test of whether the line against tyranny will hold and stop the forces of fascism. It would be up to the military to decide whether they are loyal to a person or to the Constitution.
The Capitol isn't far from the White House. Military leaders would be faced with a stark choice. Instead of watching tanks heading to the Capitol Trump could look out the window and see them with their cannons pointed towards, not away from, the White House.
Why AI-generated hands are the stuff of nightmares, explained by a scientist
Why Are AI-Generated Hands So Messed Up?
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