Donald Trump mulled using ‘martial law’ to keep the presidency

Senior aides reportedly shot down talk of rerunning the election under military control at a ‘chaotic’ White House meeting

Donald Trump leaving the White House
(Image credit: Al Drago/Getty)

Donald Trump asked aides whether he could impose martial law and order a full rerun of last month’s election, according to several anonymous White House sources.

“The possibility of using the military to enforce a second term is said to have been emphatically rebuffed by many of his closest advisers,” says The Times, “but the fact that it was raised in a chaotic Oval Office meeting on Friday marks a new, severe turn in his attempts to defy his defeat”.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Holden Frith is The Week’s digital director. He also makes regular appearances on “The Week Unwrapped”, speaking about subjects as diverse as vaccine development and bionic bomb-sniffing locusts. He joined The Week in 2013, spending five years editing the magazine’s website. Before that, he was deputy digital editor at The Sunday Times. He has also been TheTimes.co.uk’s technology editor and the launch editor of Wired magazine’s UK website. Holden has worked in journalism for nearly two decades, having started his professional career while completing an English literature degree at Cambridge University. He followed that with a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in Chicago. A keen photographer, he also writes travel features whenever he gets the chance.