A Coup for the Ages

The Putsch Express is moving at warp speed. It may already be too late.

America is Teetering on the Edge

Make no mistake. What is happening in Washington right now is the completion of a coup d’état that started on January 6, 2021. The right-wing conspiracy that failed to culminate then is doing so now. The elements for its success are finally falling into place, from a cowed news media, to compliant corporate leaders to exhausted and feckless political leaders who cannot quite grasp what is going on and are ceding the power they had to counter Trump’s scheme to become America’s first strongman leader. And, worst of all, American voters enabled this.

The evidence: over the past week, Trump & Gang’s shock and awe campaign has overwhelmed our creaky democratic system:

• As of February 2, 2025, President Donald Trump had signed 47 executive orders, six proclamations and 16 memoranda since taking office on January 20. Among these are such Orwellian edicts as “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce,” “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” “Restoring Accountability For Career Senior Executives,” “Putting People Over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism” and “Protecting The Meaning And Value Of American Citizenship.” Many are brazenly illegal such as the latter which unilaterally overrides the Constitution’s 14th amendment.

• Demanding political loyalty oaths from federal workers. Mass punitive dismissals of officials at the FBI, Justice Department, State Department, USAID and other agencies in contravention of civil service laws and regs.

• Giving carte blanche to rogue oligarch Elon Musk to run roughshod over government agencies, including shutting down USAID (which he called “a criminal organization. Time for it to die”), sending adolescent Brownshirt storm troopers possessing no security clearances or proper authorization to raid government databases, enter sensitive compartmented information facilities and arbitrarily fire officials.

• Instructing civil servants to inform on each other.

• Declaring a “state of emergency” on the southern border so as to deploy the military freely.

• Usurping the power of the purse from Congress.

• FCC thug chairman Carr threatening NPR and PBS with bogus charges.

• Undertaking hostile actions against America’s allies, notably Denmark, Canada, Panama and Mexico, including threats to seize territories.

I’m something of a connoisseur of coups d’état, having experienced two and observed others from my perch in the State Department. Most fail because the perpetrators fail to get all their ducks in order.

In September 1985, a cabal of army officers launched a coup against the Thai government. The prime minister, however, defeated the plotters in short order after gaining the support of the Thai royal family and most of the armed forces. Drawing from my sources inside the Thai army officer corps as head of a U.S. consulate, I had a ringside seat and reported what I was learning to Washington. In 1993, a son of King Sihanouk attempted a coup in Cambodia. I was U.S. chargé d’affaires. We diplomats had a spectacular view of the fireworks from our temporary digs in the upper floor of a hotel and kept Washington informed. The plotter-prince, however, lacked key allies and ended up fleeing the country. Of all the regime changes as communism fell in Eastern Europe, the most dramatic took place in Romania in December 1989, when dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown in a mass uprising. I watched from the State Department as army troops arrested him and his wife and, following one of history’s quickest kangaroo court trials, executed them with an impromptu firing squad. CNN out-scooped our embassy people on that one.

Journalist Garrett Graff (full disclosure: he was one of my editors at POLITICO) imagines how U.S. reporters would describe what is happening here if it were instead unfolding in a foreign country:

What started Thursday as a political purge of the internal security services accelerated Friday into a full-blown coup, as elite technical units aligned with media oligarch Elon Musk moved to seize key systems at the national treasury, block outside access to federal personnel records, and take offline governmental communication networks.

With rapidity that has stunned even longtime political observers, forces loyal to Musk’s junta have established him as the all-but undisputed unelected head of government in just a matter of days, unwinding the longtime democracy’s constitutional system and its proud nearly 250-year-old tradition of the rule of law. Having secured themselves in key ministries and in a building adjacent to the presidential office complex, Musk’s forces have begun issuing directives to civil service workers and forcing the resignation of officials deemed insufficiently loyal, like the head of the country’s aviation authority.

The Odds for a MAGA Reich — Anatomy of a Coup

So, do Trump/Musk have their ducks in a row to ensure their coup succeeds?

In the autocrats’ playbook, power seizure begins with the Big Lie. Trump’s actions thus far:

• Deny the truth

• Refuse to cede power after losing an election and declare victory

• Should a bloodless coup fail, resort to violence

• Try again, recruiting reactionary oligarchs to finance the takeover

• Build the lie by dominating the airwaves utilizing right-wing media and congressional toadies

• Smear the opposition daily with fabricated charges of wrongdoing with the aim of

  destroying or severely damaging them

• Cow members of your party from even daring to oppose your actions

• Purge the government ranks of potential resisters, replacing them with reliable supporters

• Put pliant stooges in charge of key departments and agencies

• Suborn the security apparatus

• Build an ad hoc personal armed force among your most fanatical followers

• Move swiftly

Trump has all but one of these ducks nailed down. The remaining step: suborn the security apparatus. Once he has Kash Patel in the driver’s seat at the FBI, he will be well along. However, the military is another story, even with Trump’s stooge Pete Hegseth in charge. Will the uniformed military brass, long indoctrinated to refuse to carry out illegal orders, unblinkingly attack civilian protesters? Or invade Greenland and Panama? Or will they refuse, even resign en masse? It’s an open question.

Democrats and allies need to counter the coup by doing the following, adapted from Waging Nonviolence:

• Call it a coup

• Mobilize regular folks to protest around the country

• Act quickly in large numbers

• Appeal to widely shared democratic values

• Convince people not to freeze or just go along

• Commit to actions that represent rule of law, stability and nonviolence

• Stay calm and remain undaunted

Resistance

There are stirrings of resistance. Protesters gathered at USAID headquarters and blocked entry to some of Musk’s goons. Democratic members of Congress joined the protest. Protesters also gathered at the Office of Personnel Management to oppose the Trump administration’s unlawful actions against federal workers. Another demonstration is planned at the Treasury Department. The head of the FBI’s New York field office, the bureau’s biggest, messaged his staff, “Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the FBI and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and FBI policy. . . Time for me to dig in.” The bureau’s two top acting officials initially refused to sign orders to turn over the names of FBI personnel involved in Capitol riot cases (but later relented). Sen. Brian Schatz has placed a blanket hold on all nominees Trump is putting forth for top State Department positions.

A senior State Department official who was abruptly terminated from their position told me, “The only silver lining is that I don’t have to rationalize this madness to others, can speak my mind privately on the way out, and eventually will do so publicly.” Fired DOJ prosecutors are already speaking out. Other dismissed officials undoubtedly will follow suit.

The Putsch Express

But it already may be too late. The Putsch Express is moving at warp speed. Court litigation is slow. Congressional Democrats’ press conferences are too little, too late and have little impact. Trump has proven to be undeterred by mass demonstrations. And craven Republican members of Congress formed themselves into a chorus of eunuchs singing hosannas to their orange master years ago. As I’ve said previously, all democracy-loving Americans, starting with their leaders, need to pull out all the stops to sabotage and paralyze this clear and present danger. Senator Schatz has fired the first shot.

A Special Message to Trump Supporters

Our democracy’s imminent collapse (if it comes) is on you. You voted in a morally depraved conman in 2016 and again in 2020, fully aware he was a felon convicted on multiple counts, found liable for sexual assault, launched a failed coup, barely ever tells the truth and whose moral comportment competes with that of the most depraved and soulless of history’s lowlifes.

Your excuse was “the price of eggs is too high.” In my recent essay, “The Moral Collapse of the American People,” I cite data showing that the price of eggs, adjusted for inflation, has remained fairly constant since the Great Depression. So, enough with that excuse already. The actual reason you voted in the man judged by historians as the worst president in U.S. history is that you no longer take seriously what democracy is all about, preferring the bread and circuses of a con artist poseur over serious policy. Over half of you cannot read above a sixth grade level. Seventy percent of you believe in angels. Six out of 10 of you don’t know which countries the United States fought against in World War II. Almost a quarter of you don’t know why we fought the British during the Revolutionary War. Oh, and two-thirds of you flunk the citizenship test which the immigrants you so loathe must pass to become U.S. citizens. It is you who voted to make the United States a banana republic, the laughing stock of the world, a juicy target for our enemies.

So, spare me your protestations. Don’t bother challenging me on social media or this platform with your Fox-infused apocrypha, “alternative facts,” and your QAnon-marinated superstitions. I’ll simply block you. As my Italian grandmother used to say, “Non discutere mai con uno stupido. La gente non noterà la differenza” — “Never argue with a fool. People won’t know the difference.” You can confidently go to your graves knowing that you brought down the world’s greatest democracy.