OB Rag Writers on Their Fears about Trump’s Attempts at a Coup

Concerns and fears of what the lame duck autocrat Trump will do next as he and most Republican leaders refuse to acknowledge Joe Biden’s election victory engulf voters who upheld democracy on Tuesday, November 3. Fears of some kind of coup and transition stalling tactics by Trump and his sycophants are on the minds of many Biden voters.

So, I queried OB Rag writers and columnists on their thoughts about all of this – and they’re not pretty. Their worse fears paint a dark future for our country.

Judi Curry is afraid that Biden won’t have all the information he needs for a smooth transition, but worse, that Trump’s refusal to accept defeat could lead to a”civil war” because “all those Trump supporters will use all the guns and ammunition they have purchased just for this moment.” Judi fears that “Trump won’t leave peacefully and dire methods will have to be used to get him out,” while COVID continues to increase because of Trump’s refusal to listen to medical personnel.

Writer Joni Halpern believes, “The President is mentally ill and has no ability to engage in reasoned or principled decision-making.” Joni thinks Trump”will be quite unable to take any action that he perceives as undermining that fragile self-image he has spent his life protecting.  So we can count him out of any other choices except the kind that he has made throughout his life.”

“I think it is entirely possible he will try to instigate a circumstance in domestic or international affairs that will call for military intervention,” she says.

“Perhaps he will even call upon the military itself to instigate the chaos. Then he can declare martial law, allow his thugs to take over the streets, and announce that the state of emergency requires a postponement of the transition to a new president.”

She agrees that may sound far-fetched. “But,” Joni reminds, “he has already fired key persons in the Defense Department and has plans to fire more in intelligence and other areas.”

“These firings are widely perceived as retaliation against persons who have not defended his interests in the past.  But it could also be that they are persons who would never agree to assist him in instigating a confrontation that could lead to war or other national crises.  Without these folks to object, the President is unfettered.”

“Our one defense,” Halpern says, ” is to stay deeply involved and opposed to everything he does.  We have learned from this President that our institutions can be corrupted or compromised, our political leaders can function without conscience, and our only hope to save our democracy is to speak out wherever we can, as often as we can, regardless of the sacrifice required.”

Columnist Kathleen Blavatt sees Trump as a bully, focused only on himself, and “is a child behaving badly,” who needs “a timeout!”

However, another writer, who wished to remain anonymous, agrees with Halpern and that:

“Trump is capable of trying anything including fabricating a national emergency, declaring martial law, attempting to use the military to put down anyone who dares fight for democracy and then doing mass imprisonments without trials.”

This writer draws a lesson from history. “Don’t forget [Trump] is a member of the Republican Party who under Nixon in 1972 were planning to kidnap leftists and imprison them in concentration camps in Baja to prevent protests during the ultimately aborted San Diego Republican Convention.”

These neo-fascist creeps can justify any acts that further their multi-national corporate agenda and program for self enrichment. And the worst part is that the clueless deplorables that have voted for him and against their own interests, even after his disgraceful and evil four years in office, will roll right over like good little Nazis while they march any dissenters off to Camp Reagan.

OB Rag columnist Richard Riehl from North County outlined his concerns. “By my count this morning,” he said, “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.” One big concern for Richard about Trump, was the “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.”

Riehl asks, “Who else will the president fire, placing in the position another wild-eyed loyalist?” He notes that “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.”

Fearing the damage that Trump can still do, Riehl says: “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 how many executive orders he might produce over the next two months, designed to sabotage Pres. Biden’s legislative agenda?”

San Diego City policy wonk, Norma Damashek, whose articles the Rag republishes, replied that “Trump gave us plenty of warning that he didn’t intend to relinquish the presidency.  He made it clear that losing was not an option for him.” She added, “Rational people may have hoped against hope that he was kidding but, actually, what he’s doing now was pretty predictable.” Norma adds:

What’s most alarming to me at this moment is not Trump but the huge number of Republican politicians who continue to enable, protect, and lie for him. I can’t figure out why they’re still in his thrall.  How come he retains such tight control over them?  What gives him the power to keep calling the shots? It’s a mystery.  And it hangs ominous and heavy over the Biden administration.

Columnist Collen O’Connor agrees that “there is a possible Coup D’Etat in the making,” – not “just a bureaucratic, or political one” but “also, a financial coup. Trump has been looting the country’s coffers since before his inaugural; brazenly and constantly, and probably illegally.”

Colleen likens Trump’s admiration for other soulless dictators and how they use “propaganda, virility, corruption and violence to stay in power.” She says:

Indeed, the violence and chaos, aimed at delegitimizing trust in anyone but the strongman, are premeditated and often heinous.  Think the Khashaggi murder. From Mussolini to Trump, each strongman proceeds to loot their own country’s coffers, arrest, fire, disparage and discipline any non-believers. Toxic Machismo. The patterns are consistent as if a Handbook for Coups exists.

O’Connor’s greatest fear, besides “Trump’s bureaucratic coup”, is this: “the threat of martial law or the invocation of the Insurrection Act.”

She asks, “How to repair the damage? And how to navigate the treacherous waters that lay ahead?” Colleen answers her own question:

The FBI rightly calls the someone like Trump, a “barricaded subject.”  … And the experienced Biden team is responding accordingly.  Like grownups.  Getting on with the job of governing.”

Eternal vigilance required to detect provocateurs that will trigger such a response; as almost happened during the Portland protest or at Lafayette Square. Here is hoping that Michael Cohn is right when he suggests Trump will continue to wail, create chaos, deny reality and just go to Mar a Largo for Christmas and never return to D.C.

Then off to a Trump TV/Radio show to continue the bombast, the lies and the cheating. As his niece, Mary contends, he will never concede.  “All he’s got now is breaking stuff, and he’s going to do that with a vengeance,” she wrote.

Already Trump is advertising the PAC (with anonymous donors, of course) as a fund to fight his multiple frivolous election lawsuits, but in the fine print, it is also a vehicle to pay off his campaign debts.

Colleen warns, “Beware another WMD misadventure,” and that we need to “be vigilant.”

Regular columnist, Ernest McCray, balances his fears about Trump, with his “joy” of “knowing that enough of my fellow Americans felt like me, that we had absolutely had about as much as we could take of a ‘Realty TV Star’s’ four or five year ‘Horror Show.'”

Reflecting many of our thoughts, Ernie says, “In my mind he’s gone, …” But “regarding his coup and not conceding, and all that, well, that’s kind of out of our hands.”

We did what we were supposed to do. And who knows what this fool might do now? Literally anything!

But out of all that’s going on I have, basically, one very major concern: that he might set those scary-ass armed to the teeth ‘I’m White and I’m Proud’ yahoos out on our streets, knowing that he could do such a thing just as easily as I could once shoot a layup. And my fear is I ain’t got no gun and I can’t run like I used to – so if that shit went down I don’t know what I’d do (smile).

Okay, I share many if not all these concerns and fears.

What about you, dear reader? What are yours?