Originally posted Sept. 24, 2020
From what Trump declared on Wednesday, we should all be memorizing the definition of a coup d’etat. When asked by a reporter at a White House press conference, Trump refused to say he would commit to a “peaceful transfer of power,” if he lost the election. Get rid of the ballots, he said, there won’t be a transfer, just a “continuation” of his power.
Coup d’etat is French and according to Wikipedia:
“A coup or coup d’état is the removal of an existing government from power, usually through violent means. Typically, it is an illegal, unconstitutional seizure of power by a political faction, the military, or a dictator.”
The Urban Dictionary shortens the definition:
“The overthrow of the current establishment, by dissidents within the government.”
So, just what did Trump say? His wording was jumbled but clear as day. He said:
“Get rid of the ballots, and you’ll have a very — we’ll have a very peaceful, there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else.”
He preceded that threat with saying:
“Well, we’re going to have to see what happens. You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster —”
He was claiming that if he lost the election, it will be because of fraudulent mail-in voting and not because more Americans voted against him.
This is not the first time Trump has made such comments. Chris Wallace of Fox News in July asked him whether he would accept the results of the election if Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden wins. Trump said, “I have to see. Look, you — I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t last time, either.” He also said something akin to that during the 2016 election.
Yet, Wednesday’s “comments” – there were a threat and a pledge – not simply “comments” or “remarks” – have to be taken seriously and literally. Some pundits afterwards said, ‘don’t be distracted’ – he’s just trying to rattle us and make us panic as he casts doubt on the legitimacy of the November election.
Perhaps we could just chalk it up to more Trump ramblings, but that is a huge risk. Especially in light of the reporting that Trump’s minions are already discussing plans with Republican legislators in battleground states about nominating loyalist electors who would all cast their Electoral College votes for him, bypassing the actual vote results in their states.
The peaceful transfer of power has been called the “hallmark” of our American democratic republic. Over 240 years since the nation’s founding, the defeated presidential candidate concedes defeat and shakes the hand of the winning candidate. Never before in that 2 and a half centuries has a president or presidential candidate ever made such a statement. For that would have been considered treasonous.
With Trump’s refusal to commit to that, he is actually plotting an illegal, unconstitutional take-over – a seizure of power. That, my friends, is a coup. And with the recent revelations by the Atlantic magazine of what Trump’s acolytes are plotting in those states controlled by Republican state legislators, we can see in broad daylight the plans for the seizure.
When presented with Trump’s threat, candidate Joe Biden was shocked, and he facetiously blurted out, “What country are we in?” Joe was so taken aback, he uttered, ” I don’t know what to say.”
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), called it “unthinkable and unacceptable.” His full tweet: “Fundamental to democracy is the peaceful transition of power; without that, there is Belarus. Any suggestion that a president might not respect this Constitutional guarantee is both unthinkable and unacceptable.”
Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the manager of Trump’s impeachment earlier this year, tweeted:
“This is how democracy dies. A president so desperate to cling to power that he won’t commit to a peaceful transition of power. That he seeks to throw out millions of votes. And a Republican Party too craven to say a word. But we will fight back. America belongs to the people.”
Trump wants to install a new Supreme Court Justice because, as he said Wednesday, the election results will end up at the Supreme Court, and that’s why he and Mitch McConnell are rushing through with the nomination vote before the election. He said, “I think this will end up in the Supreme Court. And I think it’s very important that we have nine justices. It’s better if you go before the election, because I think this, this scam that the Democrats are pulling — it’s a scam — the scam will be before the United States Supreme Court. And I think having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation.”
For months now, Trump has been undermining the legitimacy of mail-in voting, both in the media and the courts. An unprecedented number of Americans are expected to vote by mail for November’s election due to the coronavirus pandemic and Trump has been pushing misinformation related to voting practices, and that Democrats and the media are themselves plotting to steal the election through fraud. Psychopaths often accuse their enemies of the very things they’re doing.
The first presidential campaign debate will be held next Tuesday night and one of the topics will be the integrity of the election. What will Trump say then? It doesn’t matter – he has already outlined his plans. Biden was asked in June if he had thought about what might happen should Trump refuse to concede. Biden responded to Trevor Noah of The Daily Show that the military would intervene. “I am absolutely convinced they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch,” Biden said.
Trump has made other moves as part of his plot to stage a coup if he loses. At a campaign rally, he claimed the only way he could lose was if the election was “rigged.” Clearly, part of the coup plot is to deligitimize the election. He plans to have law enforcement deployed at election sites and even told supporters to vote twice – which is of course illegal. The chairwoman of the Federal Elections Commission, Ellen Weintraub, took offense at Trump‘s Wednesday suggestion that the ballots were “out of control“ and that he wanted to “get rid“ of them. She said in a tweet:
“In case anyone is unclear on the concept, in the United States of America, we do not ‘get rid of‘ ballots. We count them. Counting the ballots — *all* the ballots — is the way we determine who leads our country after our elections. The only way.”
This country has never been in this situation before. We held elections during the Civil War, during World War I and II, during the Great Depression. But now with the pandemic, the flailing economy, police shootings and Black Lives Matter protests – Trump is plotting to use all of it to seize power. He’s planning a coup d-etat. Memorize its definition.
Pundits, politicians and the press all are saying the only way to respond to Trump’s threats is to ensure Biden wins by a huge margin.
Yet, there are other ways, time-tested, to resist dictators and dictatorship. Dust off your copy of our Declaration of Independence and read it. For the people, by the people and of the people means we the people are the final arbiters of any election. And at the very least, we all ought to channel the revolutionary heroes of 1776.
Sources:
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Bernie Sanders’ response: “Just last night Donald Trump went even further down the path of authoritarianism,” he said, referring to the president’s refusal on Wednesday to commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose reelection.
“Trump’s strategy to delegitimize this election and to stay in office if he loses is not complicated,” Sanders contended. “Finding himself behind in many polls, he is attempting massive voter suppression.”
“All of these issues and others are enormously important and should be the issues that are being debated in this campaign. But today, I am not going to talk about any of them,” he said, instead saying he would focus on “something in my wildest dreams I never thought I would be discussing.”
“This is not just an election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” Sanders said, referring to the Democratic presidential nominee. “This is an election between Donald Trump and democracy, and democracy must win.”
The senator outlined a number of action items that he argued might help alleviate chaos surrounding the election.
First and foremost, he pushed for voters to hand Biden a decisive, landslide victory on Election Day, saying it would “make it virtually impossible for Trump to deny the results” and calling it “our best means for defending democracy.”
He urged state legislatures to allow the counting or processing of mail-in ballots prior to Election Day, arguing that “the faster all ballots are counted, the less window there is for chaos and conspiracy theories.”
Sanders also called on the news media to begin preparing the American electorate for the virtual certainty that because of increased mail-in voting, the winner of the election will not be decided on Nov. 3, and he encouraged social media companies to take further action to stop the spread of disinformation on their platforms.
The senator also argued for hearings in Congress and statehouses alike to provide transparency on the election process — including how the days following the election will be handled — suggesting that he sees the possibility for violence in some places.
Sanders pleaded that “every elected official in America, whether they be Republican, Democrat or independent … vigorously oppose voter suppression and voter intimidation, to make sure that every vote is counted, and that no one is declared the winner until those votes are counted.”
And he issued a call to action in particular for Republicans in Congress.
“Please do not continue to tell the American people how much you love America if, at this critical moment, you are not prepared to stand up to defend American democracy and our way of life,” Sanders said. “Stop the hypocrisy.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/24/sanders-trump-election-integrity-421230
What we’re hearing from Donald Trump now is exactly what he has complained about from former members of his administration: baseless claims from a disgruntled former employee.
The electoral college could be a problem if the RNC succeeds in assigning loyalist electors, & they all vote for the Grump.
Now, it’s up to the citizens in those states to organize and protest so the electors vote for whom
they are supposed to. The legal maneuvering could be a canard when it comes to what the RNC is actually nefariously plotting in the battle states.
And the world leaders now need to acknowledge the Biden/Harris success & refuse to deal with the Grump administration.
Then we give the Grump a participation trophy & move on while he throws a tantrum.
To cite Atlantic, November 11, 2020
Trump Needs Three Consecutive Hail Mary Passes
Richard L. Hasen
Professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine
“Moreover, legislatures would have no legal basis for going against voters’ will. The Constitution does give state legislatures the right to set the manner for choosing presidential electors, but they have already set the manner: the use of popular election to assign Electoral College votes on a winner-take-all basis in every state but Nebraska and Maine. In theory, state legislatures could try to declare under a part of the Electoral Count Act that voters have “failed” to make a choice for president, entitling the legislature to choose electors. But voters have made a choice, and there is no plausible argument that fraud or irregularities infected that choice. For state legislatures to do this, we are out of the realm of legal arguments and into naked power politics, where the choice of the president would get duked out in Congress.”
Never imagined I’d say this, but I agree with Bernie 100%. For me this vote was Donald v. Democracy. And it’s both frightening and embarrassing that this is happening. Hopefully enough people close to him stand up to him, or it could get ugly.
By my count this morning, President Tweet has 68 days remaining for him to do damage to the country before being escorted out of the White House on January 20. Here are my three greatest concerns:
1. Firing his Secretary of Defense for disloyalty, replacing him with a loyal retired Brig. General and an Under Secretary for Policy, who, according to a June 18, 2020 story in the Washington Post, once tweeted that President Obama was a Muslim terrorist. Who else will the president fire, placing in the position another wild-eyed loyalist? And what damage to the country will they do in 60 days?
2. Over 70 million people voted for the president, many, no doubt, drawn to him for his claim that a President Biden would take away their gun rights? It’s not hard to imagine a few of them, even less mentally sound than Trump, being tempted to keep that from happening? Let’s hope for an overabundance of security for the new president on Inauguration Day.
3. It doesn’t take more than a day for a president to issue an executive order. Here’s one that Trump signed on his Inauguration Day: freezing the federal workforce, prohibiting government agencies from hiring any new employees. Who knows what executive orders he might produce over the next two months, designed to sabotage Pres. Biden’s legislative agenda?
Based on comments by his psychotherapist niece and a former top executive of the Trump organization, I think we can expect a “scorched earth” departure from the white house. Both say essentially that he will try to break things and burn things down.
This is a fairly concise piece on what we’re facing:
“The Envy of the World”: Still No Functioning Democracy Here
https://obrag.org/2020/09/trump-plots-coup-detat-if-he-doesnt-win-promises-continuation-and-makes-plans-to-install-loyal-electors/
I find all this some pretty scary shit and, even with the fresh snow and little sprinkles starting to fall again, I’ve heard AR15 and handgun practice echoing from different directions even though it’s deer hunting season (illegal to use ARs for hunting).
sealintheSelkirks
I have no idea how I switched the link and put in the RAG one. Oops! Try again:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/11/11/the-envy-of-the-world-still-no-functioning-democracy-here/
sealintheSelkirks
Was thinking – there has to be a better term for this than coup? Coup implies cheeto man isn’t already in power.
A coup or coup d’état (/?ku? de??t??/ French: [ku deta], literally “blow of state”; plural: coups d’état, pronounced like the singular form; also known simply as an ousting, overthrow, takeover, or putsch) is the removal of an existing government from power, usually through violent means. Typically, it is an illegal, unconstitutional seizure of power by a political faction, the military, or a dictator.[1] Many scholars consider a coup d’état successful when the usurpers seize and hold power for at least seven days.[1]
Wikipedia 11/13/2020