Weekly Mind Dump: Trump Coup 2.0 Will Succeed

The GOP's methodical groundwork for challenging election results with the connivance of the MAGA Supreme Court will make the coup happen. Then come the fanatics to run things.

Week of 9/6-9/12, 2024:

How They Will Win

Former JCS chairman Mark Milley is quoted by Bob Woodward in his latest book, War, as saying, “He [Trump] is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country… A fascist to the core.”

Retired Major General Randy Manner said on “Morning Joe” that “President Trump is demonstrating the attributes of fascism every single day... and every American that is supporting Trump right now needs to understand that they are absolutely supporting fascism if they vote for Trump.”

These military men, students of history, know what they’re talking about. And they can see what’s coming: a seizure of power in the coming weeks by Donald Trump and his fifth column Republican Party. It will be a “legal” fascist putsch, much like how Hitler gained power lawfully by gaming the system.

I’ve been writing about the rise of fascism in this country for several years. In my latest essay titled, “The ‘Correlation of Forces’ That Bode for a Fascist Future,” I lay out how right-wing Republicans have been laying the groundwork to emplace minority rule since the 1980s, and I apply Cold War metrics to gauge the conditions which enable the far-right to take power.

Trump is likely not so lost in dementia that he is not well aware he may lose the popular and electoral votes to Kamala Harris. So, he has other plans.

Political commentator Thom Hartmann has laid out recent measures by the GOP to game the system to guarantee a Trump victory in his latest piece, “Does Trump Have a 2024 Blueprint for Stealing the White House?” It’s an outstanding and digestible analysis which I highly encourage you to read.

Highlights:

Article II (the Executive Branch), Section I, Clause 2 of the Constitution (and the 12th Amendment, which revises it) gives solely to the legislatures of the states the power to control the electors who will decide the presidential election.

While the updated Electoral Count Act explicitly redefines the Vice President’s role as purely ceremonial, it does not — and could not without a constitutional amendment — alter the power of individual Republican-controlled swing states to send Trump electors (claiming that the Harris-winning results in their states are the result of voter fraud) to DC.

Regardless of how transparently dishonest such an effort would be, its primary result would be to throw to the Supreme Court the decision over which electors to count.

The Court could then declare the election flawed because of the alleged voter fraud — Republicans across the country, as well as Trump and Vance, are already preparing the ground for this claim — and, citing the 12th Amendment, throw it to the House of Representatives.

Under that scenario, each state’s House delegation has one single vote for president (the Senate is not involved under the 12th Amendment) and right now there are 26 states controlled by Republicans: the 26-24 vote would put Trump and Vance in the White House for the next four years.

That strategy would require one or more individual states to either refuse to certify their vote, delay certifying their vote, or submit multiple slates of electors.

Another option to produce the same result would be for a majority vote in the House to refuse to certify a Harris win.

The most likely scenario, though, would involve local election officials gumming up the works by slow-walking counts, challenging counts, or outright refusing to certify counts at the state level long enough that several individual state votes can’t be certified by January 6th, very much like in the election of 1876.

That would provide an easy excuse for the six Republicans on the Supreme Court to intervene, invoke the 12th Amendment, and throwing the election to the House, guaranteeing Trump’s victory.  

The NYT’s Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corasaniti neatly sum it up :

The Republican Party and its conservative allies are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system. Their wide-ranging and methodical effort is laying the groundwork to contest an election that they argue, falsely, is already being rigged against former President Donald J. Trump.

Even if the cases fail, Mr. Trump’s allies are building excuses to dispute the results, while trying to empower thousands of local election officials to disrupt the process. Already, election board members in several states have moved to block certification of primary election tallies, including in a major swing county in Nevada last week.

Sound like a vast right-wing conspiracy? It is. And what will stop it and how is anybody’s guess, especially given the MAGA-friendly Supreme Court.

I’m encouraged that principled individuals like elections lawyer Marc Elias, the Harris campaign and others have made their own preparations to jump into action to oppose the GOP plot. But their strategy to rely on the courts can be slow and time consuming, while certification deadlines are near-immediate. And, again, the SCOTUS MAGA 6 are more than ready to pull off another Bush v. Gore outcome. Republicans, led by proven MAGA minion Mike Johnson in the House, will take advantage of the chaos and confusion to declare “victory” and foist a fait accompli.

Soon we will all know whether to don MAGA armbands, apply for asylum in Canada or simply burrow deeply to try to weather it out.

Now my confession: I’m writing this in devil’s advocate mode, hoping to energize readers to act in their own way to defend our democracy in these trying times. After all, “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

The Nutters and Cranks Who Will Staff Trump’s Reich

Voltaire is reputed to have said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

Should Trump return to power, the ranks of his administration will be flooded with extremist nutters and cranks like Kash Patel, a prime candidate to head the CIA or other high position in the national security structure. The consequences would be disastrous for the country, as these delusional shock troops would lead us into destructive policy directions, inspired by runaway paranoia, cruelty and aggression. They would be the vanguard to wage war on democracy and commit atrocities against Trump’s infinite number of enemies, Americans and foreigners alike.

The NYT’s recent profile of Patel provides us a review of his disturbing track record as well as a preview of coming attractions.

“Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you,” he said in an interview late last year. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”

The NYT’s piece describes an oddball mendacious mediocrity who got himself noticed by Trump and, in return, acts as a slavish fanatic in pursuing Trump’s nutso conspiracy delusions and perceived legions of enemies.

He unilaterally had fueled conspiracy theories directly to Trump that Kyiv, not Moscow, had meddled in the 2016 election. Trump rewarded him with one senior national security position after another which he used to undercut experts and foster disruption.

On Saturday Patel declared at Trump’s Coachella, CA rally, “The two-tier system of justice is the Deep State’s wrecking ball and operational arm of choice, and we need to destroy it.”

In a Trump II administration also expect a return of the Halloween freaks Steve Bannon, Steve Miller, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn and a host of unknowns still waiting in the wings of Hell. It will be a spectacular grand guignol of God’s rejects, frothing at the mouth to bash in heads as well as liberty.

History is replete with sociopath-ruled autocracies managed by this ilk of lunatics and psychopaths: Lavrentiy Beria under Stalin; Reinhard Heydrich, Julius Streicher, etc. under Hitler; Nuan Chea, Son Sen and the entire genocidal team under the Khmer Rouge’s Pol Pot; the Taliban, etc., etc.

Who’s to say it can’t happen here? It already has. Only next time, it will be much, much worse.