“A traitor only becomes one if their plot is discovered. The imposition of guilt means nothing to those who feign loyalty.” Stewart Stafford
By Glen Reaux
Repost from January 2019
The 2020 presidential election is fast approaching and while the Republicans don’t appear to have anyone brave enough to challenge Donald Trump, the Democrats currently have reduced their candidates to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Among the Democrats, there appears to be a great deal of courage to run for president but a lack of courage is evident when the leadership of the party fears the “I” word, impeachment. Of the 24 presidential candidates from the Democratic Party (Dems), only six of them are calling for the so-called president’s impeachment in opposition to Nancy Pelosi. Such reluctance by the Dems to do their constitutional duty is a serious mistake and only emboldens Trump and his Senate minions to the point that they feel invulnerable in their criminality. In the 2018 election, the American people gave control of the House of Representatives to the Dems for the purpose of placing this so-called president in check. Now, in violation of the people’s trust, they are refusing to do so. Herein lays the problem. By abdicating their rights and duty to impeach, one is forced to ask the question, is “2020 The Year of the American Coup?” With a corrupt Senate at Trump’s disposal, Attorney General William Barr acting as his personal attorney and a plethora of judicial appointments including two Supreme Court Justices and a spineless Democratic Party leadership, Trump now has the ability and will to stage a coup via the 2020 election. There is no doubt that he has the courage or is crazy enough to do so. Whether he wins or loses, America is in for a tumultuous and possibly very violent transition of government if it transitions at all.
Trump is wielding power like no other American President. This is being made possible by a Republican-controlled Senate and Trump’s abuse of power through his acts of obstruction of justice which include his current defiance of Congressional subpoenas while ordering others and former members of his administration to do the same.
Many of the country’s top mental health professionals have deemed Trump to be mentally ill {1} while others have pointed out his psychopathic characteristics and tendencies {2}. What is frightening, is the fact that his psychopathic characteristics were shared by Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, and Idi Amin Dada. To place this behavior in context to today’s political arena, Kim Jong-un of North Korea, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Ram Kovind of India who is currently launching Trump styled attacks on the Indian government and its legislative and judicial institutions, are all autocratic leaders that Trump admires and is currently attempting to emulate.
While comparing what is happening in America to North Korea may sound a bit extreme, much like fake -president Putin, Trump is backed by a political party that prospers off of corruption, has the support of powerful oligarchs and thanks to Citizens United and the Supreme Court {3}, he now has an inexhaustible source of foreign money and influence to call upon for his re-election campaign. Couple these circumstances with his legal strategy that abuses the justice system, lack of effective opposition by the Dems, holes in our constitutional system and his psychopathic behavior and you have the foundation for what could become the very first successful American coup.
Unlike all other U.S. Presidents that came before him, Trump does not have any respect for the rule-of-law. Nor, does he abide by any conventional political or societal norms such as honesty, compassion or anything else that remotely resembles humanistic qualities. He shares the same ruthlessness as the autocrats that he admires. Sigmund Freud would define him as an Id dominant personality {4}, one who is only driven by a need for self-gratification. His cult-like followers have perverted American and religious values to the point where America has ceased to exist and has been replaced by Trump-land. In the event that Trump is defeated in the 2020 election, he will not go quietly into the night. Due to his psychopathy, Trump would incite his followers to violence. His MAGA cult members, many of whom are violent alt-rightist will riot in the streets as they did in Charlottesville Virginia in May of 2017. In Charlottesville, a white supremacist drove his car through a crowd of peaceful protesters killing a young white woman. This is an incident where Trump embraced the white nationalist and blamed the woman’s death on the peaceful protesters. The night before, hundreds of alt-right members marched through a college campus carrying tiki torches while shouting “Jews will not replace us!” All of this occurred while peaceful, civil rights activists held a meeting in a nearby campus chapel.
The religious-right known for its strong Christian values and conservative principals has abandoned its Christian ideology in exchange for Trumpism, which is the belief system whatever Trump does is alright and the rest of the world is wrong. Trumpism appears to have replaced Christianity and become their new religion. It’s as if the religious right has been infected with a Trump version of typhoid fever, trumpoid fever. Trumpoid fever has to be the answer to the rise of Trumpism. What else would cause true Christian leaders and their followers to condone by acceptance the sins of, sleeping with porn stars, adultery, open admissions of sexual assault, separating children from their parents, putting children in cages like wild animals, assaults on healthcare and the elderly, misogyny, racism, advocating violent behavior by his followers and police officers and dishonesty to the degree of thousands of bald-faced lies being told daily? Led by Franklin Graham III, son of Billy Graham, the religious right has forsaken Jesus the Christ and in his name, joined the Make America Great Again (MAGA) cult by calling for a day of prayer on June 2nd to support Trump and his inhumane policies asking God to protect Trump because through God Trump is the only hope for this nation. In essence, religion and prayer have been weaponized in an attack on America. This is proof that Trump has truly infected America and the madness of trumpoid fever may be the impetus that will lead to an American coup.
A thorough examination of Trump’s tactics, weaknesses in the American election process, corruption within the judiciary system and the madness caused by trumpoid fever reveals why a coup in 2020 is highly possible and probable.
The American election process was founded upon the presumption that everyone wants a fair, honest and inclusive election. However, gerrymandering has become an ever-growing assault on the right to vote by people of color and the poor. And, the results from the 2018 midterms have provided evidence that it is a tactic that the Republican Party will continue to use going into the 2020 election {5}. This tactic and other forms of voter intimidation when added to continued election tampering in the form of social media attacks by the Russians when assisted by or coordinated with the Trump campaign present a danger to future elections. According to the FBI, in 2016, the Russians penetrated voter rolls and other election infrastructures on state and county levels in states across the country {6}. Their cyber attacks are escalating {7} because there has been nothing done by the Trump administration to protect our election system.
When these circumstances are examined, the only reachable conclusion is that an attempted coup is currently underway and will culminate with the 2020 elections. This current coup attempt being orchestrated by so-called-president Trump is multi-faceted. There can be no guarantee that the 2020 election will yield true results. To think so is being foolhardy. But, the Democratic leadership is hoping to win the 2020 election. They, to this day, fail to realize that you cannot deal with a madman, expect him to act with sanity or address his violent attack on our democracy with passivity. He has declared war on America and unless the Democrats go to war with him utilizing superior firepower, force, and tactics, they will die miserably face down in the mud and take the rest of America with them.
In the event that Trump does not win the election via the Electoral College as he did in 2016, other circumstances exist that would facilitate a coup. First, Trump might denounce the results as a coup attempt or claim that the results are inconclusive due to election fraud. It the past he has incited MAGA rally crows to attack protesters that were in the audience saying that he would pay for their legal defense. So, he might incite his MAGA cult members to violently take to the streets in protest of the election results. According to Michael Cohen Trump’s long-time attorney and Vice President of the Trump Organization, in a February 27, 2019 testimony before Congress stated:
“My loyalty to Mr. Trump has cost me everything: my family’s happiness, friendships, my law license, my company, my livelihood, my honor, my reputation and, soon, my freedom. And I will not sit back, say nothing, and allow him to do the same to the country…” “[I] Indeed, given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power, and this is why I agreed to appear before you today.”
The US constitution makes no mention of how a president should be removed if one were to lose an election and refuse to hand over power to their opponent. Federal law enforcement and the military operate under the orders of the President who appoints the Attorney General, Director of the FBI and Secretary of Defense all of whom are die-hard Trump minions. The House of Representatives has no power over law enforcement or the military. Trump has already branded law enforcement officials that investigated him during the Mueller probe as traitors. He has advocated the arrest of political opponents. His Cabinet Members including Attorney General William Barr have defied Congressional subpoenas, openly lied to the American people and perjured themselves before Congress. The Senate branch of Congress controlled by his Republican minions have circled the wagons, backed Trump’s every illegal action and approved every judicial and Supreme Court appointment by Trump.
“After the presidential election, your governor prepares a “Certificate of Ascertainment” listing all of the candidates who ran for President in your state along with the names of their respective electors. The Certificate of Ascertainment also declares the winning presidential candidate in your state and shows which electors will represent your state at the meeting of the electors in December of the election year.”{8}
Republican governors have led the charge in gerrymandering and the purging of Democrats, the poor and ethnic minorities from the voter rolls. In 2018, Georgia’s then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp refused to recuse himself from overseeing the gubernatorial elections for which he was a candidate. During his tenure as Secretary of State, he illegally purged more than 850,000 people from the Georgia voting rolls and canceled tens of thousands of absentee ballots during the 2018 election. He won the 2018 governorship and has always been an ardent Trump supporter. If Trump were to declare voter fraud and Kemp and or others were to refuse to certify the votes and the electors or issue a Certificate of Ascertainment, there would be no new president of the United States. A total vote count could not be reached and the matter would be sent to the courts. In the interim, since the constitution does not provide a mechanism to remove a president that refuses to leave office, Trump could and probably would demand to stay in office until the issues are resolved by the courts.
In the 2000 presidential election, voting irregularities were encountered in Florida and a recount was started. In Bush v. Gore the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the halting of the recount which led to the election being awarded to George W. Bush with 271 electoral votes (one more than the needed 270), making him the 43rd President of the United States. The decision was down party line with the Republican-controlled Court ruling 5 to 4 in favor of Bush. Although the recount was disallowed by the Supreme Court, the recount continued resulting in what would have been a victory for Gore by about 42-171 votes over Bush.
Currently, Trump controls two of the three branches of government and controls the Senate which has compromised Congress, the third branch. As per Trump’s legal strategy, the courts would have to decide the legitimacy of the votes in each of the states where the governor has refused to issue a Certificate of Attainment. With Barr as Attorney General, these legal battles could go on indefinitely. After all, who would represent the government in these cases if Barr refuses to do his job as the Nation’s attorney? Until a new president takes office and a new cabinet is ratified by the Republican-controlled Senate, Trump would still control law enforcement and the military. This situation would lead to demonstrations in the streets by both Trump supporters and supporters of his opponent. Trump supporters have been known for violence and in the event that violence erupted, Trump has the power and every intention to declare martial law and use the military to enforce law and order. Let us not forget that in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, in 2018 Trump ordered the U.S. Army to the southern border to enforce his immigration policy. His generals knowing that it was an illegal act, followed his orders. The Posse Comitatus Act {9} prohibits the use of U.S. military forces on American soil to enforce domestic policies. However, other laws do allow Trump to use the Military to enforce Martial Law.
Posse Comitatus Act
Trump has never hesitated to use the military when he has felt that it would benefit him. If Trump publicly or covertly incites his followers to violence, he will not hesitate to use it again. Trump declaring martial law after losing the 2020 election will be the death knell for our democracy. He controls the Justice Department, the Courts, and the Senate. His MAGA cult that is infected with trumpoid fever includes white nationalists, the religious-right, greedy corporations, oligarchs, racist police officers, alt-right extremists, the right-wing-media and neo-Nazis. If he were to leave office he would be facing decades in prison for his state and federal crimes. This means, at his age, he would die in prison. He would do anything to avoid the consequences that would come with losing the election. Like Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and others before him, he is psychotic enough to attempt a coup. Once he has established power to that degree, presumably, the only way to get him out of office would be to kill him.
Our nation is in crisis, our democracy is in jeopardy and our lives are in peril. Just look around you. America is no longer America, it is Trump-land and suffering from trumpoid fever. To the unsuspecting Democrats and Independent voters thinking that defeating Trump in the 2020 election will be their salvation, remember Trump has done nothing to protect our election system from foreign hacking or interference. In 2017, Trump’s Republican minions in the Senate voted down legislation that would have funded election security. The intelligence community and Special Counsel Robert Mueller have warned that the foreign election interference is continuing and will escalate in 2020.
Trump is a proven racist and everyday America is getting more and more diverse. By 2040, less than a generation from now, White people will be in the minority in this country. Newly elected, young and energetic Congresspeople like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib are not corruptible, speak for the people and will institute sweeping reforms. These facts frighten Trump, the Republican Party, and their oligarchs. The very thought that they would lose this country to non-whites has driven them mad to the point of forming alliances with foreign governments and former enemies of this country to help them keep control. These elites and racists will do anything to keep this from happening even if it means embracing Donald Trump or becoming one of his minions. Since they have embraced Trump and Russia, the next step of supporting a coup is a logical progression for them. For a trumpoid fever infectee, it is a no-brainer, “they are saving America.” Fear has driven them to this point of madness. For Nancy Pelosi, Independent voters and the rest of you that are against impeachment, Trump has a plan for you and it’s not pretty. Not at all! Coming from a man that has been a close confidant and business associate to Trump for more than 12 years, Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen sends a dire warning: “Indeed, given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”
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Linked Sources and Documentation
- Trump mentally ill: https://www.google.com/search?ei=YBD4XOLvLoietAXyt51Y&q=Trump+mentally+Ill+psychology+today&oq=Trump+mentally+Ill+psychology+today&gs_l=psy-ab.12…213375.1736063..1738473…10.0..1.506.7353.12j37j2j2j0j1……0….1..gws-wiz…..6..35i39j0j0i131j0i67j0i20i263j0i10j0i131i67j0i3.yXgsj2EfCSk
- Psychopathy: https://www.healthyplace.com/personality-disorders/psychopath/psychopath-vs-sociopath-what-s-the-difference
- Citizen’s United, pdf: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf
- Id dominant personality: https://www.verywellmind.com/the-id-ego-and-superego-2795951
- Gerrymandering in the 2018 election: https://www.brennancenter.org/publication/extreme-gerrymandering-2018-midterm
- FBI, Russians hack election systems: https://www.rollcall.com/news/whitehouse/barrs-conclusion-no-obstruction-gets-new-scrutiny
- Escalating cyber attacks: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/2019-ATA-SFR—SSCI.pdf
- Ratification of votes by governors: https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/about.html
- Bush v. Gore: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/531/98/case.pdf
Copyright © 2019, Glen Reaux, all rights reserved
