US Politics 1/8 - fools still endorse Trump
Any political leader who even considers supporting Trump can't be trusted. Trump openly plotted a coup to overthrow the government of the USA, and yet people like Dave Wilson of the "Palmetto Family Council" in South Carolina are still willing to back him under the right circumstances, while NPR reporters treat this basically as normal politics (though the reporter did insert the comment "we all know who Trump is by now").
Wilson is either hopelessly ignorant and confused, or a tyrant at heart. Either way, he's not someone any serious citizen should listen to. 1/8
US Politics 2/8 - Trump's coup plot would destroy America
When I say Trump openly plotted a coup, I mean is that he was recruiting members of the political elite to publicly endorse a coup attempt, which would lend a veneer of legitimacy of a subsequent coup. He may have never 'pulled the trigger', and it may not be possible to convict him of any crimes, but that doesn’t change the political fact that he was claiming the powers of the President despite clearly losing the election. If he had won that elite support, many of his appointees probably would have ignored legal orders from President Biden and obeyed illegal orders from Trump, leaving it to the military, civil service, and law enforcement to decide whose orders to follow; we’d be in the middle of a civil war right now. 2/8
US Politics 4/8 - Judges were invited to join coup
1. Judges: Trump immediately made unfounded claims that widespread election fraud had cost him the election. Trump’s team made no serious effort to distinguish serious claims from utter bullshit, leaving me to believe that they had no reasonable basis for the fraud claims (see the Navarro Report, for example, which is full of completely asinine claims). Consequently, Trump and his lawyers have been sanctioned for bringing frivolous lawsuits before multiple courts. It’s unclear whether Trump intended these lawsuits simply as political stunts to support his anti-election propaganda campaign, or if he thought that some judges would put partisan and personal loyalty above their Constitutional duty; but regardless, even if judges had used these bullshit claims as an excuse to invalidate election results, this still would have been a coup. 4/8
Sanctions in CO: https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/attorney-sanctions-upheld-utterly-baseless-lawsuit-challenging-2020-election-2022-12-13/
Sanctions in FL: https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-lawyers-sanctioned-nearly-1-million-political-lawsuit-vs-clinton-2023-01-20/
Summary of legal results: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/11/30/trumps-judicial-campaign-to-upend-the-2020-election-a-failure-but-not-a-wipe-out/
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/election_law/litigation/
#Trump #judiciary #President #2024 #coup #election #usa #crime
US Politics 5/8 - Pence was invited to join coup
2. Vice-President Pence: The Vice-President does not have the power to pick and choose electors for President (and Vice-President). This is obvious to everyone, except proto-fascists like Trump and his advisor John Eastman. Pence recognized the absurdity of this claim and followed his Constitutional duty; if he had done otherwise and Trump had claimed power after his term ended, it would have been a coup. 5/8
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/11/pence-jan-6-election-certification-script-00016539
Eastman, by the way, before the election used mass media to argue for revoking the citizenship of many thousands of Americans who were born to immigrants in America – in a naked attempt to eliminate Kamala Harris as a political opponent.
US Politics 6/8 - State legistarors were invited to join coup
3. State legislators: State legislatures do not have the power to change election law after election day and essentially nullify election outcomes that they dislike. Even though Trump, Eastman, and many individual legislators (at state and Federal levels) made this absurd claim, no state legislature (as a body) endorsed it. Even if a legislature had claimed to nullify the election results from it’s state, any claim to power after Trump’s term ended would have been a coup. 6/8
https://www.cato.org/blog/state-legislatures-cant-overturn-presidential-election-results
US Politics 7/8 - State Secretaries of State were invited to join coup
4. State Secretary of State. The GA Secretary of State does not have the power to change how votes are counted simply because the results don’t smell right to him. If Brad Raffensperger (or other officials) had revoked his certification of the results, any claim to power by Trump after his term would have been a coup. 7/8
#Trump #Raffensperger #Georgia #President #2024 #coup #election #usa
US Politics 8/8 - Everything Trump tried would have been a coup
Overall, every path that Trump pursued would have resulted in a coup; he only needed the endorsement of a few elite government officials to give the veneer of legitimacy that could have been used to rally regular people to support his claim to power (leaving aside the fascist street-fighters he rallied on Jan 6). We are lucky that they stood firm in face of Trump’s pressure; we are lucky that the election was not close enough that any of them thought that they could flip the results on their own. Finally, the fact that Trump did not follow through with his coup plot does not exonerate him of any crimes nor does it mean that he’s a normal politician – it only means that he won’t be executed. 8/8
Threads with content wrappers (9/8)
I originally published this thread two weeks ago. Sorry if you already saw it. I put a CW around it so as not to clutter people's timelines -- but I was concerned that using the same CW for every post had hidden the content and looked like I was just reposting the same thing again and again. So I'm reposting with more descriptive headers for the CW.
Threads with content wrappers (9/8)
@DecaturNature thank you. Great read!
US Politics 3/8 - Elite endorsement was first step in Trump's coup
Trump made several appeals for support from elite government officials. All were couched in bogus factual or legal claims, so even if those government officials had endorsed his claims, any attempt by Trump to stay in office for a second term would have been a coup. Some of the major appeals went to various judges, VP Pence, state legislators, and state Secretaries of State. (details below with references) 3/8
#Trump #Biden #President #2024 #coup #election #usa #crime