A coup attempt is underway.
On the surface, it’s being led by the deranged-but-incompetent, bombastic-but-cowardly psychopath Donald Trump.
On our TV screens, Trump’s Capitol-storming army consists mostly of loud, brainwashed racist morons, who wave and wear made-in-China Trump merchandise to demonstrate their belief that America is being stolen from them.
But the coup has been years in the making. Brought to you by, among many others, the Koch Brothers, “Dark Money” donors, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Steve Bannon, Mark Burnett, Facebook, Vladimir Putin and the ever-complicit Republican Party.
It’s a coup that many have predicted and warned about for years. Experts in tyranny and authoritarianism. Mental health experts. National security and terrorism experts. Journalists. Comedians. House impeachment managers. And many others.
Along the way, Republicans scoffed at the concerns. They went from “let Trump be Trump” to “he’s learned his lesson” to “he’s just blowing off steam.”
In 2020, Trump labeled Antifa a terrorist group, then took to the Presidential debate stage to tell the Proud Boys to “stand by.”
Meanwhile, warnings about white domestic terrorism and the long-term “white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement” went unheeded.
When The Big Lie about the election first took hold, we laughed at Oozy Giuliani and the Trump lawyers humiliating themselves as they took loss after loss in the courts.
But plans were being laid on the internet. Plans that, somehow, our white-supremacist-infiltrated law enforcement organizations chose to ignore.
Things got so bad that before, during and after the storming of the Capitol, as Rep. Pramila Jayapal told MSNBC: “We don’t know who is protecting us and who is not.”
Trump got banned from Twitter yesterday for trying to inspire future attacks, possibly on January 17 and also Inauguration Day itself.
But inciting violence—relentlessly attacking our country—still hasn’t gotten Trump banned from the GOP.
On the contrary, top Republicans want to leave him in place to see out his term. Mike Pence refuses to bring up the 25th Amendment. Mitch McConnell says a Senate trial on a second impeachment won’t start till Trump is leaving or has already gone. The cop murdered by the Trump rioters hasn’t even been buried. But now that the shit that got smeared on the halls of the Capitol has been washed away, insurrectionist and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy already wants to “start the healing process.”
Imagine if after 9/11 we knew Bin Laden was planning more and bigger attacks but Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell said they’d rather let things play out for another couple of weeks.
The coup attempt is ongoing. America remains in peril. The GOP remains fully complicit.
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