A Cockamamie Coup is Still a Coup
Over the past 3 weeks, we've had some hearty laughs.
From Rudy's great landscaping adventure to his anti-hair club for men promo to both Junior and Donald tweeting that they won the election when they actually lost to Sidney Powell channeling her inner Michelle Bachmann and being too crazy even for Trump, we've seen what happens stupid people try to navigate a humiliating loss. But as comical as it has all been, there exists a larger, more pertinent issue at hand. An issue that with the barrel of laughs, seems to have been missed by the mainstream media. Because while the execution was piss poor, there can be no denying the intent of what we saw from the Republican Party over the past three weeks:
They attempted to overthrow our democratically-elected government.
That, boys and girls, is the definition of a coup d'état: the removal of an existing government from power. In this case, it was not a sitting government that was attempted to be removed but rather an incoming one. Because of that, and because of the fact that the power players were essentially cast offs from the series Veep, hardly anybody outside the most hardened political circles took what was happening seriously. In fact, even in political circles there remained several prominent members who simply laughed off Donald Trump and his coterie of criminals for what they considered to be one final bumbling attempt to somehow stay relevant. But the fact that it was done so haphazardly should in no way diminish the intent and that intent was to remove a democratically-elected government from power.
Think of it this way. In the film Home Alone, our two main criminals were buffoons who were time and time again outsmarted by an eight-year-old kid. The audience laughed at their antics. But when push came to shove, these were hardened criminals who not only committed breaking and entering, but who also attempted to abduct an eight-year-old child. In the court of law, that is a serious charge. In the court of law, those two criminals receive no mercy for the fact that they were foiled in their efforts. All a judge sees is their intent and their actions, regardless of how humorous the end result might have been.
The same goes for Republicans. Starting with Donald Trump, this entire sorry excuse for a political party engaged in three weeks of intentional misinformation. Democratically-elected senators and representatives refused to distance themselves from this coup. They said there was nothing wrong with "wanting to count the votes." Lindsey Graham tried to have the Georgia Secretary of State throw out legal ballots. The Lieutenant Governor of Texas offered $1 million to any individual who found voter fraud. Project Veritas implied that the Post Office intentionally withheld ballots. And right wing media from Fox News to OANN to Newsmax provided a public platform for every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a tinfoil hat to step forward and tell us how the Deep State was trying to stealing the election from Donald Trump.
These actions had real life consequences. The Arizona Secretary of State received death threats simply for doing her job. Wayne County's two Republican members on its Board of Canvassers initially refused to certify its results, essentially disenfranchising that county's black voters. That led to two members of the Michigan GOP delegation being wined and dined at the White House by Donald Trump in a further attempt to subvert the election. While all this was going on, Trump's legal team filed lawsuit after lawsuit in court and as of Tuesday evening, they had lost 35 out of 36 filings. All of this alleged uncertainty created the space for GSA Administrator Emily Murphy to intentionally stall the formal transition process for an incoming President-elect Biden. Oh, and let's not forget that nearly 40,000 Americans died over three weeks while the "president" golfed and took to Twitter to spout off ridiculous conspiracy theories.
But perhaps worst of all was the impact all this has had on the integrity of American elections. Donald Trump lost. Bigly. He got his ass kicked. He lost by 74 electoral votes, 6 million+ votes, and lost 5 states and a swing district in Nebraska that he won in 2016. So what does it say that only 3% of Trump supporters think that Joe Biden actually won the presidential election?
That is the real impact of this failed coup. An effort to delegitimize the administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Because as all of us know, Donald Trump is a sad, pathetic loser. But his supporters don't believe that and the longer they continue to support him the more money he can make off of them. They are the rubes that Republicans have been grooming for half a century who have been taught to hate the "other" even though they have no idea why they're supposed to hate them. Donald Trump needs his sheeple to sell books, to launch Trump TV, and to pay off the billion-plus dollars he owes to creditors all over the globe. He wants to leave the White House defiant, projecting a false confidence and an air of bravado for all his supporters to see. Since he never even saw himself on Joe Biden's level, his narcissistic ego won't allow him to process the idea of losing an election to him. And thanks to the right wing bubble, his supporters feel the exact same way.
The Republican coup might not have succeeded in the traditional sense, but we should have no doubt that it did grave damage to our democracy and our reputation around the world. The fact that the power players were all perfunctory putzes should have no bearing on what went down. This was a blatant attempt to reverse the results of a democratic election. Were we to read about a political party in a foreign country attempting to subvert the will of the voters through intimidation tactics and illegitimate legal arguments, we would call that party out and rightfully so. Yet when it happens in the United States with a cast of B-list legal "experts" we tend to overlook what actually happened. But we shouldn't. Like the villains in Home Alone, a Biden Department of Justice should show no mercy toward each and every Republican who participated in this coup.
And like our eight-year-old hero in home alone, a Biden Justice Department should throw the book at all the criminals involved.