by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I have a number of conservative-but-not-MAGA people in my family who don’t really support Trump but, because of negative polarization, essentially support Trump.
The key issue issue is — to date — Trump has yet to do something that people like me can point to as truly tyrannical. He’s done a lot of “cruelty is the point” things, but nothing obviously extra-political. He’s abused power. He’s significantly weakened our democracy, but he’s yet to do anything extra-political. And, remember, Trump has done some pretty outrageously illegal things — paying off Stormy Daniels, for one — but nothing that was so completely indefensible that we as a nation had the political will to do anything about.
That’s why Trump may be setting himself up for political destruction in the last month of his time in office. If he stages a coup of some sort, that would be a transactional, extra-political event that conservatives-who-aren’t-MAGA would have significant difficulty defending. Maybe to the point of finally endorsing Trump having some accountability at last — they’ve gotten their young hack MAGA judges and huge plutocrat tax cut, why wouldn’t they?
Or, put another way, there may come a point very soon when it becomes clear that Trump cares more about his own perceived self-preservation than any political consideration he will, at last, given the rhetorical tools necessary to get conservative-but-not-MAGA people woke.
Generally, history takes the most ironic path possible, so it would be fitting if after 5 years of terrorizing America Trump loses it all because he stages makes an unprecedented power grab in the last month of his term. The key point we have to take Trump’s coup plotting seriously. This situation has all the classic signs of a epoch-making clusterfuck.
A person with power making significant miscalculations under pressure, is a key one. But I still don’t understand how, exactly, Trump plans to seize power if the U.S. Military won’t follow an illegal order. I guess I could see him going transactional on Twitter, but even then, that would just cause political violence.
I guess, — guess — if he went transactional on Twitter and incited significant political violence then he might use that, in itself, as an excuse to seize power. But this is December 2020, not January 2020. He has just a few weeks in power. He would need a thin veneer of legality to stay in power. There are a few Hail Mary Pass attempts he might try — all involving boxing SCOTUS into a partisan box.
While I have no faith in SCOTUS anymore, for him to place all his bets on them pulling an uber-2000 on us given how reluctant they’ve been to do such a thing to date is really bonkers.
But it’s at least possible that Trump may try just that.
We’re going to be living in “interesting times” far, far sooner than we can possibly imagine.
