Trump's Coup d'état.

[Cavemonster]

No light side badge for you.

It is an incompetent, failed coup. When does it move from attempted to failed?

It moves to failed around noon on January 20th (hopefully)

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm not sure who is in the department right now, but Trump is fully empowered to, totally legally, make sure it's 100% loyal to him by Jan 20.

There is no law stopping him from firing every agent tomorrow and replacing them with Proud Boys.

Given that Trump has both the motivation and the opportunity to do so, why would he not?

I thought we were talking about after Jan 20 if Trump tried to just stay on.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It moves to failed around noon on January 20th (hopefully)

See, I think you can move it into the failed category now. There is no evidence Trumpy has the competence or more than 3-stooges-like followers to do it.

How about when the electors are certified?

How about when they certify President-elect Biden?

Trump's efforts to change the outcome pretty much die in there somewhere.

 

[uke2se]

See, I think you can move it into the failed category now. There is no evidence Trumpy has the competence or more than 3-stooges-like followers to do it.

How about when the electors are certified?

How about when they certify President-elect Biden?

Trump's efforts to change the outcome pretty much die in there somewhere.

I agree with you that Trump's coup isn't showing any signs of succeeding. The point being made is that it is extraordinary and not a little bit frightening that a coup is being attempted in the US by a sitting president. That's the issue here, that and the damage this reality does to US democracy.

 

[Darat]

That's a better choice than watching Trump's presidency.

Yeah I've never been a fan of reality TV, whether that be The Apprentice or the current series of POTUS.

 

[Garrison]

I agree with you that Trump's coup isn't showing any signs of succeeding. The point being made is that it is extraordinary and not a little bit frightening that a coup is being attempted in the US by a sitting president. That's the issue here, that and the damage this reality does to US democracy.

If it was just Trump maybe it wouldn't be so bad, its the fact that so much of the hierarchy of the Republican Party is willing to play along when they know full well its all nonsense. In the name of sucking up to Trump's 'deplorables' they are happy to destroy the credibility of the US election process and leave a substantial chunk of the electorate convinced President-Elect Biden is not the legitimate President of the USA.

Also how often are people going to keep trotting out, 'The President can't do that', only for it to turn out they can if they are sufficiently lacking in concern for the functioning of the US government and have a compliant Senate backing them up. Too many of the 'rules' have turned out to be toothless gentlemen's agreements that Trump has simply trampled underfoot without any consequence.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

To be fair, I think it’s clear that Powell didn’t mean that Chavez had personally influenced the election. She was alluding to the fact that he had designed a voting system that had ensured an overwhelming victory for him, and that same system had been used to favor Biden somehow in this election.

Absurd, of course, but it doesn’t help to mischaracterize what she meant.

 

[gnome]

Once (with a mildly cautious if added in) the transition actually occurs, can we call this the #Kudatah2?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Again I'm not getting what crow we're supposed to be eating because Trump's coup might not succeed.

The damage done to the trust in the US Democratic Process and the seeds planted for a future person to stage a more successful takeover of the US Government by just putting yes men in a few key positions is more than enough damage.

The whole "Hardy har lookit you being all dramatic he only got 96% of the way to a coup before getting bored and giving up" thing baffles me.

 

[cosmicaug]

If it was just Trump maybe it wouldn't be so bad, its the fact that so much of the hierarchy of the Republican Party is willing to play along when they know full well its all nonsense. In the name of sucking up to Trump's 'deplorables' they are happy to destroy the credibility of the US election process and leave a substantial chunk of the electorate convinced President-Elect Biden is not the legitimate President of the USA.

Also how often are people going to keep trotting out, 'The President can't do that', only for it to turn out they can if they are sufficiently lacking in concern for the functioning of the US government and have a compliant Senate backing them up. Too many of the 'rules' have turned out to be toothless gentlemen's agreements that Trump has simply trampled underfoot without any consequence.

They are OK with this. Just quoting for emphasis.

 

[cosmicaug]

Famous actor or something.... Separate from that, however, he has a good point, which I have often made, which is that people often overthink Trump (though usually not as badly as Scott Adams).

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1329728889296355328.html

The core of it is that he knows he’s in deep, multi-dimensional legal jeopardy & this defines his every action. We’re seeing 1) a tactical delay of the transition to buy time for coverup & evidence suppression 2) above all, a desperate endgame... which is to create enough chaos & anxiety about peaceful transfer of power, & fear of irreparable damage to the system, that he can cut a Nixon-style deal in exchange for finally conceding.

 

[Garrison]

Again I'm not getting what crow we're supposed to be eating because Trump's coup might not succeed.

The damage done to the trust in the US Democratic Process and the seeds planted for a future person to stage a more successful takeover of the US Government by just putting yes men in a few key positions is more than enough damage.

The whole "Hardy har lookit you being all dramatic he only got 96% of the way to a coup before getting bored and giving up" thing baffles me.

Imagine if the VP was someone in the Dick Cheney mould rather than an empty suit like Pence? Trump spent 4 years lying and cheating and yet more people voted for him in 2020 than 2016. Only the sheer ineptitude of Trump's cronies has prevented him from totally subverting the democratic process.

For that matter imagine if the election had been genuinely close? We can laugh at him getting a couple of thousand votes thrown out in a state where the margin is 10s of 1000s, but what if that few thousand was the margin?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Famous actor or something.... Separate from that, however, he has a good point, which I have often made, which is that people often overthink Trump (though usually not as badly as Scott Adams).

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1329728889296355328.html

//Replying to article, not cosmicaug//

Again if Trump "Mr Beans" himself to a coup we're not less screwed then if he "Keyser Sozed" his way into a coup.

As with the "Oh well it's not like he succeeded" thing I don't know what the "Oh it's not like he's some criminal mastermind" gotcha is supposed to be.

 

[cosmicaug]

//Replying to article, not cosmicaug//

Again if Trump "Mr Beans" himself to a coup we're not less screwed then if he "Keyser Sozed" his way into a coup.

As with the "Oh well it's not like he succeeded" thing I don't know what the "Oh it's not like he's some criminal mastermind" gotcha is supposed to be.

Of course.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I think this exchange has gone too far past your original false equivalence that both parties were the same. I withdraw.

Okay, I think I just figured out what you were talking about. You interpreted my post as a "both sides" with respect to political parties, based on this:

Actually... it pretty much was the same thing. It's speculation based on belief.

In actuality, however, that's not what I was talking about. I was talking about this:

I'm not saying that I have absolute certainty that officials will go along with a Trump plan.

I'm saying that such a thing is not impossible simply because they said otherwise.

I'm not saying there's a teapot orbiting Mercury. I'm just saying that it's not impossible.

Sure, that's exactly the same thing.

Actually... it pretty much was the same thing. It's speculation based on belief.

 

[Thermal]

I guess the school I went to taught a different concept of a coup. It had to have...you know...actual force behind it. Perhaps a theoretical chance of grabbing power. What im seeing here is a whining crybaby launching Twitter complaints and having lawyers throw up ridiculous suits that are summarily tossed into the trash. There are a few knuckle draggers with guns who get quickly stepped on by the actual force of the actual State, but he seems to have no actual muscle behind him. Just a few flaccid legal claims with a big red "Denied" stamped on them.

But oh yeah. This is a for real coup attempt. Not impotent bull **** at all. This President inspires so much hyperbole, while actually being so weak, that it's a little stunning.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Okay, I think I just figured out what you were talking about. You interpreted my post as a "both sides" with respect to political parties, based....

We interrupted it as both sides because you keep screaming, constantly, all the time about "both sides."

You suffer from a common argumentative problem. You think you can complain about both sides equally and have it be it's some great injustice if people just go ahead and assume you see both sides as equal.

Trump is trying to steal this election. This is one of those facts like water being wet and fire being hot. If you see the people saying "Trump is trying to steal this election" as "just as bad" as people saying the Democrats are trying to steal it, and every complaint of what Trump is doing is met with your standard milquetoast whining about "well the other side isn't perfect"

If you want to stop being accused of "Bothsidism" stop doing it.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The core message of Trump and his Republican supporters is this:

Democracy doesn't work, because it is too susceptible to fraud.

For the good of America, we have to abandon Democracy.

Hmm.

Too Much Democracy Is Bad for Democracy
America’s Problem Isn’t Too Little Democracy. It’s Too Much.
Too Much Democracy?
America Is Living James Madison’s Nightmare
Democracies end when they are too democratic.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Again I'm not getting what crow we're supposed to be eating because Trump's coup might not succeed.

The damage done to the trust in the US Democratic Process and the seeds planted for a future person to stage a more successful takeover of the US Government by just putting yes men in a few key positions is more than enough damage.

The whole "Hardy har lookit you being all dramatic he only got 96% of the way to a coup before getting bored and giving up" thing baffles me.

This. As inept as Trump's coup seems, it is still a coup, done with the approval of seventy million Americans and the silent assent of an entire political party. You can't unring that bell.

 

[Dave Rogers]

In actuality, however, that's not what I was talking about. I was talking about this:

So you're equating the following two propositions:
(1) There is a teapot in orbit around Mercury, despite the fact that teapots are human manufactured objects, so an immense amount of effort would be required to place one in such a location, effort that could not reasonably have been hidden from the human race.
(2) The number of members of the Republican Party prepared to support a Trump coup could become large enough for such a coup to succeed, when we know that there are pro-Trump organisations prepared to defy the law of the land (eg. Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and other far-right paramilitary groups) and that there are senior members of the party (Mitchell and Graham spring to mind) who have expressed support for Trump's current attempts to overturn the results of the election.

I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing any sense in which that wildly implausible thing and that disturbingly plausible thing are 'exactly the same thing.'

Dave