coup
/ko͞o/
noun
1. a sudden, violent, and illegal
seizure of power from a government.
The part I’m not understanding is where was the attempt to seize power?
The people who came in armed and with zip-tie flex cuffs, what were they attempting to do?
A sloppy mob sacked the U.S. capitol, and occupied it for a few hours.
If this exact same thing happened to the White House, would you call it a coup attempt?
Do you remember last month's attempted kidnapping of the Michigan governor that was foiled? Are you aware their backup plan, if they couldn't find the governor, was to lock themselves in with the legislature and start executing them? That's certainly violent, and the legislators are certainly where power is held in a democracy. Executing them would definitely be the violent overthrow of that government, quite a lot more so than the executive. Not least in terms of numbers, the greater difficult of replacing them, in contrast the straightforward presidential succession process.
You knew that the Vice President was with the legislators in the capitol when this transpired, as was the Speaker of the House. Right? The #2 and #3 in the order of presidential succession?
In my opinion, your position looks timid, lacks imagination and awareness. Perhaps you're not American and have no attachment or pride in the the U.S. capitol being sacked by a sloppy mob that included white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Trump flag waiving cultists and Confederate battle flag waiving losers.
Does their incompetency make it less serious of a problem? You really have no imagination at all for how very differently things might look had it been more sophisticated?
https://nypost.com/2021/01/07/us-capitol-police-officer-dies...
If you can't tell this is a coup, then it might be your first -- the punchline from: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/trumps-far...
Riots are sudden, violent and illegal. This was a riot organized to specifically stop the transfer of power. Only the characteristic "sudden" is doubtful; this coup was organized in the open, without the usual element of surprise.
How? This is the part I'm missing. Yes it got stalled for a few hours while everything was going down, but after folks got their selfies and pilfered swag it was done. I'm not sure this motely crew really anticipated squaring off against the US Secret Service and National Guard to indefinitely suppress the transfer of power.
There were organized elements in the group. The event was organized on Parler, and other sites, a week in advance. They were goaded and led by the president, his family, and loyal senators. Their aim was political, to retain power using violent undemocratic means for their leaders. They had weapons and bombs. They had enough planning to position caches of weapons and ammunition. They weren’t there to protest some new agricultural rule and just got out of hand. It was a coup attempt by any definition. It is only because it happened in America people are having trouble with that. There’d be no such trouble if this happened in Mali, or Niger, or Chad, or Albania, or any European country.
By intimidation, at a minimum, and potentially (though this wasn't acheived) by (potentially selective) destruction of the electoral vote certificates and violence against the persons of legislators (including the Vice President, who some involved have pointed to as a specific target.)
> Yes it got stalled for a few hours while everything was going down, but after folks got their selfies and pilfered swag it was done.
That's because, despite being too overwhelmed to prevent the Capitol from being taken, the security forces at the Capitol were able to execute an effective delaying and evacuation effort, getting the legislators and electoral votes to safety.
> Yes it got stalled for a few hours while everything was going down, but after folks got their selfies and pilfered swag it was done.
It wasn't “done”, as many of the insurrectionists explicitly stated the intent to return and continue violence until and unless their goals are met.
Imagine the legislators didn't escape - that a majority of them were killed. Trump and his people use this as an excuse to illegally "send the vote back to the states." Kelli Ward suggested this while the mob was in the capitol. We were not far from that scenario.
But this did involve the storming of a legislature in session in a obvious attempt to thwart the proceedings in a power grab. It was poorly organized but seemed premeditated on the part of many participants.
The more technical term for the kind of coup attempted (an extension of power beyond the legitimate term or scope by or on behalf of the current leader, is “auto-coup” or “self-coup”.)
I mean, that's a coup attempt. There's no need to look for another term. It was an incompetent coup attempt, sure, but the term still applies.
So that heavily implies that whatever their methods, the intention was to get them to ignore the democratic process and confirm trump instead
> One NATO source set the stage, using terms more commonly used to describe unrest in developing countries.
"The defeated president gives a speech to a group of supporters where he tells them he was robbed of the election, denounces his own administration's members and party as traitors, and tells his supporters to storm the building where the voting is being held," the NATO intelligence official said.
"The supporters, many dressed in military attire and waving revolutionary-style flags, then storm the building where the federal law-enforcement agencies controlled by the current president do not establish a security cordon, and the protesters quickly overwhelm the last line of police.
"The president then makes a public statement to the supporters attacking the Capitol that he loves them but doesn't really tell them to stop," the official said. "Today I am briefing my government that we believe with a reasonable level of certainty that Donald Trump attempted a coup that failed when the system did not buckle."
The insurrectionists/rioters were not simply attempting to disrupt the vote. Many of them explicitly posted on social media about intending to kill members of congress. The woman who was shot and died, Ashli Babbitt, said on social media the day before, that “Nothing will stop us. They can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours …. dark to light!” The Storm is an explicit QAnon conspiracy forecast event where Trump / his supporters would conduct mass executions of the democrats and his opponents.
Similarly, many of the insurrectionists were explicitly looking for Mike Pence in the Capital. They had weapons, they had zip ties for detaining people, several had pipe bombs. If they would have found any of their targets (or the full group of lawmakers on lockdown) and a hostage / execution scenario began, that would have created a power vacuum / level of chaos that could have opened the door to Trump trying to stay in power.
So this was clearly a coup attempt -- a pathetic one that wasn't well executed. But the folks who stormed the building were explicit in their motivations -- to stop the legitimate functioning of government, to foment revolution, and to force the world to keep Trump in power.
https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1346920198461419520?ref...
The alternative for that officer was violence. While surrounded.
The lies coming out of the media (which normally lie he took the selfie with the protesters) at the moment are insane.
Sure, "Trump deliberately attempted a coup".... because he's mentally ill.
But the media is actually pulling off a real coup by consistently implying it was even close to happening. Feeding "Multiple European security officials" who feed them back.
How did the "5 people dead" reported from the media actually die out of interest? We know one, filmed from many angles, all the rest? These ongoing media lies are outrageous.
One person was shot by police. As for the other three:
"One adult female and two adult males appear to have suffered from separate medical emergencies, which resulted in their deaths," Contee said. "Any loss of life in the District is tragic and our thoughts are with anyone impacted by their loss."
At least one one those medical emergencies was simply a heart attack. And possibly another from an accidental fall from scaffolding, though the article says police were unclear. Doesn't sound like violence had anything to do with them, at least directly. If it did, I'd expect that to be made clear.
Think about it, Trump invites these gas bags to the white house, and then gets em all riled up about something or other, then tells them to march to the capitol? That's 9 miles away! A march of that length is practically a death sentence for a lot of these patriots! Trump is playing 4d chess as always.
Sure, some of them may have rascals or walkers to lean on, but that march might as well be 40 years in the desert. Stumbling, out of breath, leaving a trail of high capacity ar-15 mags emblazoned with the cross, and dragging a confederate flag through the mud like a starving sauropod's tail, just after the meteor.
Trump new exactly what he was doing. Exercise for Americans!? He's bold,you got to give him that.
Trump is currently not mentally-ill enough to be unfit for the Presidency. Of course, that's decided at the Capitol, so it may change after he directed violence toward it.
And Fox News agrees with other outlets about the circumstances of five deaths.
This article is about NATO contemplating what it would mean to bring financial sanctions against the USA under the circumstances of a successful coup.
No, it's decided in the White House Cabinet Room (well, metaphorically; by the VP and Cabinet, wherever they are located) initially, under the 25th Amendment; Congress isn't involved until he says he's all better after he's been temporarily removed, where if the Cabinet disagrees Congress resolves the dispute.
Whether he is too criminal to continue in office is decided in the Capitol, through the impeachment process, though.