Is Trump Planning a Coup d’État?

 

"In their sobering 22-page report, they write of the potential for “escalating violence” if Trump loses and refuses to bow out gracefully. Given the administration’s record of embracing “numerous corrupt and authoritarian practices,” huge numbers of Americans must be ready to take to the streets should Trump and his henchmen try to illegally curtail the counting of mail-in ballots. The administration could deploy federalized National Guard troops to stop vote counts. Indeed, on the day Joe Biden accepted the Democratic presidential nomination, Trump suggested on Fox News that he could order federal agents, even local sheriffs, into polling stations ostensibly to monitor fraud. Trump and his allies could also challenge the results in numerous states simultaneously, send federal forces into Democratic-controlled cities, and through social media accounts and speeches, activate right-wing paramilitary groups.

The report warns that a desperate Trump could push the American republic to the breaking point. The authors even envision scenarios in which Trump wins the Electoral College but loses the popular vote and exploits the ensuing unrest, goading Western states into attempting to secede from the Union.

Increasingly, election observers point to the possibility of Trump using the courts to contest so many states’ ballot tallies that the Supreme Court ends up as the ultimate arbiter, as happened in the 2000 election. In some scenarios he loses, but his campaign refuses to accept state results, aiming to tie up the process so that states can’t certify their results in time for the January inauguration. In others he dispenses with the legal niceties and simply refuses to cede power, banking on enough backing from quasi-military agencies supportive of his agenda, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection as well as law enforcement agencies at the local level and militia groups, that it would take a military intervention to bounce him from the White House. Something like this scenario was outlined in an open letter to Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by two Iraq War veterans, John Nagl and Paul Yingling, in mid-August. “If Donald Trump refuses to leave office at the expiration of his constitutional term, the United States military must remove him by force, and you must give that order,” they wrote.

But relying on a conservative-dominated Supreme Court or a military that has been conditioned—for good reason—never to intervene in domestic political disputes is hardly a surefire path to protecting the country from Trump’s dictatorial ambitions. Which brings us back to people power."

more in the article by Sasha Abramsky​

Is Trump Planning a Coup d’État? | Portside