There Will Be No Trump Coup
There Will Be No Trump Coup
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/10/opinion/sunday/trump-election-authoritarianism.html
A final pre-election case for understanding the president as a noisy weakling, not a budding autocrat.
By Ross Douthat
Opinion Columnist
Oct. 10, 2020
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Across the last four years, the Trump administration has indeed displayed hallmarks of authoritarianism. It features egregious internal sycophancy and hacks in high positions, abusive presidential rhetoric and mendacity on an unusual scale. The presidents attempts to delegitimize the 2020 vote arent novel; theyre an extension of the way hes talked since his birther days, paranoid and demagogic.
These are all very bad things, and good reasons to favor his defeat. But its also important to recognize all the elements of authoritarianism he lacks. He lacks popularity and political skill, unlike most of the global strongmen who are supposed to be his peers. He lacks power over the media: Outside of Foxs prime time, he faces an unremittingly hostile press whose major outlets have thrived throughout his presidency. He is plainly despised by his own military leadership, and notwithstanding his courtship of Mark Zuckerberg, Silicon Valley is more likely to censor him than to support him in a constitutional crisis.
His own Supreme Court appointees have already ruled against him; his attempts to turn his voter-fraud hype into litigation have been repeatedly defeated in the courts; he has been constantly at war with his own C.I.A. and F.B.I. And there is no mass movement behind him: The threat of far-right violence is certainly real, but Americas streets belong to the anti-Trump left.
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Meanwhile, the scenarios that have been spun out in reputable publications where Trump induces Republican state legislatures to overrule the clear outcome in their states or militia violence intimidates the Supreme Court into vacating a Biden victory bear no relationship to the Trump presidency weve actually experienced. Our weak, ranting, infected-by-Covid chief executive is not plotting a coup, because a term like plotting implies capabilities that he conspicuously lacks.
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J_William_Ryan
(1,753 posts)But we must never underestimate the evil that is Trump, he will certainly seek to compromise the election process to his advantage and we must be prepared to oppose Trumps every attempt.
CozyMystery
(652 posts)As for plotting, tRump has people for that.
JI7
(89,249 posts)That there are people still looking out for and stopping serious threats .
What Trump needed was for those terrorists to succeed and none of our institutions do anything to stop it.