'Coup' Concerns Suddenly Don't Seem So Far-fetched

Victor Davis Hansen

For most of the last three years, Donald Trump's critics have scoffed at supposed "conspiracy theories" that claimed a "deep state" of bureaucrats were aborting the Trump presidency. We have been told the word "coup" is hyperbole that reveals the paranoid minds of Trump supporters.

Trump's critics have also radically changed their spin on "coups." To them, "coup" is no longer a dirty word trafficked in by right-wing conspiracists. Instead, it has been normalized as a possibly legitimate means of aborting the Trump presidency.

Mark Zaid, the attorney representing the Ukraine whistleblower, boasted in two recently discovered tweets of ongoing efforts to stage a coup to remove Trump.

"#coup has started. First of many steps. #rebellion. #impeachment will follow," Zaid tweeted in January 2017. Later the same month, he tweeted: "#coup has started. As one falls, two more will take their place."

Retired Admiral William H. McRaven recently wrote an op-ed for The New York Times all but calling for Trump's ouster -- "the sooner the better."

No sooner had Trump been elected than Rosa Brooks, a former Defense Department official during the Obama administration, wrote an essay for Foreign Policy magazine discussing theoretical ways to remove Trump before the 2020 election, among them a scenario involving a military coup.

In September 2018, The New York Times published an op-ed from an anonymous White House official who boasted of supposedly widescale efforts inside the Trump administration to nullify its operations and subvert presidential directives.

Such efforts to oppose Trump are often self-described as "The Resistance," a reference to the underground French fighters resisting the Nazis in World War II.

Trump's opponents often have praised the deep state precisely because unelected career officials are seen as the most effective way to sabotage and stymie his agenda.

A "coup" is no longer proof of right-wing paranoia, but increasingly a part of the general progressive discourse of resistance to Trump.

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