I started writing this over a month ago, but the message is just as pertinent now.
More and more people are finally starting to say "Trump" and "coup" in the same sentence. This new wave of coup concerns came after Trump made some very strong statements about the lengths he will go to refuse to concede the election, as well as an article published on September 23 in The Atlantic detailing the ways Trump and Republicans could attempt to declare the election as illegitimate.
"We'll want to have — get rid of the ballots, and you'll have a very — we'll have a very peaceful — there won't be a transfer, frankly," he added. "There'll be a continuation." - Donald Trump, September 23, 2020.
Trump said he is "counting" on federal courts to determine the winner of the election. He also suggested to reporters in the Oval Office earlier on Wednesday that he wanted to have his Supreme Court pick confirmed by the election for that exact reason.
"I think this will end up in the Supreme Court, and I think it's very important that we have nine justices," he said. "And I think the system's going to go very quickly."
And it's not just journalists who are raising concerns, but this includes politicians such as US Senator from Oregon Jeff Merkley:
"If Trump is trying to bypass the election & work with GOP state legislatures to ignore electoral results that would be a flat-out coup. Make no mistake, our democracy is under grave threat – not from abroad but from the White House." -Jeff Merkley, September 24, 2020
Beyond Trump's suggestion to simply get rid of the ballots, members of the Trump campaign and Republican party have actually begun pondering the feasibility of a number of ways to "bypass election results" (i.e. stage a literal coup). Already the Republican party in California has committed voter fraud by setting up fake ballot collection boxes. Pennsylvania Republicans took major steps to form an "election integrity panel" as a means to be able to dispute their state's election outcome. (They scrapped the plan after backlash.)
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/
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After the election, if Trump declares that all votes for his opponent are illegitimate and there will be no transfer of power, that certainly would be a coup. However, focusing on this misses the big picture. There has already been a coup, in broad daylight. More precisely, the type of coup that has happened is called a "self-coup"--where a lawfully-established government moves to unlawfully change or disregard procedures in order to exceed the powers granted to them.
Americans seem to believe that in order for there to be a coup, the President must declare martial law, physically rip up the Constitution, and send 50% of the population to FEMA concentration camps.
We suffer from "it can't happen here" syndrome. Our perspectives of what constitutes a "coup" consists primarily of military leadership implementing dictatorships and civil leaders clearly announcing an old regime is being replaced. "Coups" to most people are events from decades ago in "third world countries", where history books tell us in black-and-white language that a certain event was a coup.
When these events actually unfold, however, it is not always so black-and-white. The fact of the matter is, when we've been in a continuous state of "Constitutional Crisis" for over 4 years, it's more than a mere crisis. It means the regime we're living under has fundamentally changed. There's been a coup.
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In our current situation, the "Constitutional Crisis" began when Mitch McConnell blocked the appointment of a Supreme Court judge for 11 months in 2016 in the hopes that his party would obtain the presidency and be able to appoint their own judge. Demonstrating the extent of their bad faith and intent to begin a Constitutional Crisis, multiple high ranking Republican party leaders explicitly named Merrick Garland as a judge they would be willing to appoint. When Obama decided to nominate him, the Republican-controlled Senate decided to thrust us into a Constitutional Crisis rather than hold a confirmation hearing. (Following lawful procedures, the Senate would have held a confirmation hearing on the judge, and voted not to confirm him if they had valid reason to believe he would be unqualified for the office.)
Beyond this, the Republican party blocked the confirmation of over 100 other federal judges during the Obama administration, which Trump boasted about.
From day 1 of Trump's presidency, we have been in a state of "Constitutional Crisis". Namely because Trump refused to divest from his businesses and has used his office to enrich himself through these businesses--this is a violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. More importantly, never have we had a presidential candidate who openly advocated that our enemy, Russia, hack his opponent. (And this is only the tip of the iceberg of the Trump campaign and administration's collusion with Russia).
Then, the self-coup continued when key figures in the House and Senate sabotaged Congressional investigations into Trump's crimes with Russia. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was the most blatant in this.
When individuals of principle resigned or were fired from federal agencies, Trump has frequently appointed and elevated individuals as "Acting" heads of different Executive branch agencies. This illegally bypasses the Constitutional requirement for such individuals to be confirmed by the Senate. While in some cases it is permissible to have acting department heads if the position is not able to be filled in an expedient manner, the Republican party has controlled the Senate for the entire Trump presidency, so they could have easily appointed these individuals in a lawful manner. Yet they have intentionally chosen not to follow the Constitution.
(One of these acting department heads was recently removed by a federal judge, because his occupancy of the position was not confirmed by the Senate, and thus illegal.)
The fact that we were advancing well beyond a mere "Constitutional Crisis" became very obvious when Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court, largely because of his opinion that a sitting president could not be indicted. This would mean, had Mueller taken the fate of America more seriously and decided to indict Trump for the crimes that were uncovered in his investigation, Kavanaugh would stand ready to defend Trump. Kavanaugh couldn't even maintain a level-headed and impartial composure during his confirmation hearing--ranting conspiracy theories about how anyone who opposed him was somehow part of a plot with Hilary Clinton. (This isn't even touching the cover up of Kavanaugh's sexual misconduct allegations). Yet the Republican party believed it was necessary to place this man on the highest court in the land.
The house of cards of the "checks and balances" of the Constitution was obliterated when Attorney General William Barr was brought in to cover up the Mueller report and block further investigations into Trump's crimes.
(As an aside, recent reports have shown that although former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions had managed to keep a somewhat respectable public persona, they were just as morally bankrupt as the rest and were instrumental in the Department of Justice enforcing the barbaric child separation policy. Recall again that Sally Yates was fired as Acting Attorney General for refusing to uphold something as comparatively "bland" as the Muslim travel ban. Both Rosenstein and Sessions not only believed the child separation policy was acceptable, but advocated that "we need to take away children," and "it did not matter how young.")
If all the points outlined above were not enough to demonstrate a self-coup, undeniable evidence came when the Republican party announced they would not be impartial jurors (as their sworn oath requires) and acquit Trump in the Senate impeachment trial, no matter what the evidence against him. When the trial actually came, they followed through and effortlessly acquitted him. They were bold enough to refuse to allow witnesses at the trial. After years of getting away with their crimes, they decided to send the message that they weren't even going to pretend to give the trial any semblance of legitimacy. (Afterall, how could they hope to run a fair trial when they are implicated in his crimes?)
Now that Trump appears very likely to lose the 2020 election, they are trying to push through another unqualified Supreme Court judge just weeks before the election. This is despite the fact that Republicans so bitterly fought to establish the "precedent" that a judge should not be nominated in an election year. If they had any confidence in Trump's reelection, they could have simply waited until after the election to avoid this controversy and brazen hypocrisy that may end up causing a strong Democratic backlash in the election.
"I want you to use my words against me. If there's a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination." -Lindsey Graham, 2016.
(Also a reminder that Graham said Trump would destroy the Republican party and they would deserve it. Now he licks his boots at every opportunity.)
Inch by inch, the Republican party brought about the conditions to get away with their coup. For the entire duration of the Trump presidency, they have been able to operate outside of the Constitution with essentially no consequences.
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To summarize: the Republican party, in all three branches of our government, has ignored the Constitution for the entire duration of the Trump presidency in order to ensure their party is able to maintain power and operate without limits. That is a coup.
Further evidence that the Constitution is not really in effect for the Republican administration can be seen by the facts that federal agents with concealed identities have taken protestors away and the Postal Service has been sabotaged to rig the election. And already the party is preparing for the possibility of unconstitutionally using the Supreme Court to decide the election in their favor (as it did in the 2000 election).
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Over the course of writing this article, something very grave has happened. All the rhetoric of civil war and violent coups has progressed beyond mere rhetoric.
In the presidential debate on September 29, when asked to condemn white supremacy, Trump instead told white supremacist groups to "stand back and stand by."
A week later, over a dozen individuals with ties to far-right and white supremacist terrorist groups were arrested. For months they had been plotting to kidnap and presumably murder Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, along with potentially killing police and other government officials. Their goal was to "overthrow" the Michigan state government and incite other white supremacist groups elsewhere to follow their lead to begin a civil war.
On October 17, Trump held a campaign rally in Michigan. During the rally the crowd chanted "lock her up" (referring to Governor Whitmer). Trump belittled the terrorist plot by saying "I guess they say she was threatened."
Governor Whitmer had some very strong words for Trump--saying he has incited domestic terrorism and is complicit in the plot for fanning the flames and giving a pass to white supremacist terrorists at every opportunity.
"It's incredibly disturbing that the president of the United States, 10 days after a plot to kidnap, put me on trial, and execute me — 10 days after that was uncovered — the president is at it again and inspiring and incentivizing and inciting this kind of domestic terrorism," Whitmer said on NBC's "Meet the Press," following a Trump campaign appearance in Michigan Saturday.
"She noted that Trump said a white supremacist group called the Proud Boys should "stand back and stand by" when asked to denounce them at a recent debate against former Vice President Joe Biden, whose national Democratic campaign for president she co-chairs. Anyone who fails to denounce such groups is "complicit," she said."
For years, commentators have been saying Trump's support for white supremacy encourages "stochastic terrorism." This means that, although not endorsing any specific group or action, such rhetoric increases the probability of terrorism occurring until it becomes statistically inevitable.
Now we have an example of Trump feeding the flames and being "complicit" in a terrorist coup attempt against a state government... I fear things can get much worse.
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Conclusion
If Trump actually did refuse to accept the results of the election and destroyed ballots in order for him to win, then even the media and politicians couldn't deny that there had been a "classic" coup--where no part of the Constitution would remain in effect and the Trumpist-Republican dynasty would retain power indefinitely.
But we can't ignore the reality that the Republican party has intentionally been operating outside of the Constitution for the entire 4 years of Trump's presidency. That is an intentionally-engineered self-coup.
In many self-coups of the past, the regime explicitly announced they were giving themselves 'emergency powers' to suspend the constitution, and then 'normalcy' returned once support for their coalition collapsed.
In our case, the Republican party has done everything loudly in plain sight, yet gaslighted the public whenever anyone demands transparent answers. If Biden wins the presidency, they will quietly act like nothing wrong ever happened and probably go back to blaming the other party for the national debt and other nonsense to distract from their own corruption. Indeed, they are desperately hoping that the next presidential administration will not hold a Crimes Commission to weed out all the corruption and lawbreaking that has occurred over the past 4 years. Such a Crimes Commission would not only find them guilty of carrying out a coup and other treasonous acts of the highest order, but also the run of the mill corruption and self-enrichment which has ramped up to nearly limitless levels.
Most of the public will probably believe Republican gaslighting that a coup never happened, because they didn't come out and explicitly state they were committing one... But we can see the plain facts of the matter and aren't afraid to tell it like it is. America will not survive if the next administration does not hold a Crimes Commission and brings all those who took part in the coup to justice.
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