Without Real Accountability Trump Will Certainly Try Another Coup

Almost a century ago, in early November, 1923 Hitler tried a coup with 2,000 Nazis, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, which failed spectacularly, while making Hitler (in)famous. 16 Nazis-- quickly turned into martyrs by the Nazis, just as Trump has tried to do with Ashli Bobbitt-- and 4 policemen were killed and Hitler, who was slightly wounded, was arrested two days later and charged with treason. But the German government at the time was as weak and ineffective as Biden. Hitler got away with a slap on the wrist-- 9 comfy months in jail, where he wrote Mein Kampf, one of the few books that have inspired Señor Trumpanzee, who is basically functionally illiterate.

Yesterday, Yale historian Tim Snyder and author of On Tyranny, an expert on authoritarianism, joined Ari Melber on MSNBC yesterday. Take a look above. "What we know historically," warned Snyder, "is that a failed coup is a trial run for a successful coup. Usually when you fail in a coup, something happens to you-- and Mr. Trump... nothing has happened to him." Not even a slap on the wrist. Earlier today, we talked about Biden's sinking polls numbers among Democratic voters based on the Democrats' pathetic failures to deliver on their campaign promises. Add the Biden Administration's failure to deal with Trump to the list.

"Historically speaking," Snyder told Melber, what we know about a 'Big Lie,' is that because of its very scale, it's not about truth or not truth; it's about living in a kind of alternative reality. And what we;'re looking at is people who believe in or pretend to believe in this Big Lie actually carrying out our elections. And the problem with this, or one of them, is that since these people have already claimed that the other side cheated, this basically legitimates their cheating. In other words, if you talk about The Big Lie now, you're basically promising to cheat the next time around, and that's very concerning."

Snyder added that "The scenario for 2024 for most influential people around Donald Trump... is precisely to be installed without winning the election. That's very consistent with everything that Trump has ever said, in 2016, 2020 and now. I don't think it's something that could happen; I think it's something that's underway and the question is, 'can we accept this reality in time to take the measures we need to take to prevent it?'"

Apparently, not with Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema at the helm.

This might be a good time to look at the Washington Post report from early this morning on the 1/6 the coup plotters' use of the Willard Hotel as a command center. Giuliani led the effort, which helps explain why it failed. Other who participated include Bannon, Bernard Kerik, John Eastman, Christina Bob from OAN...

The effort underscores the extent to which Trump and a handful of true believers were working until the last possible moment to subvert the will of the voters, seeking to pressure Pence to delay or even block certification of the election, leveraging any possible constitutional loophole to test the boundaries of American democracy.

“I firmly believed then, as I believe now, that the vice president-- as president of the Senate-- had the constitutional power to send the issue back to the states for 10 days to investigate the widespread fraud and report back well in advance of Inauguration Day, January 20th,” one of those present, senior campaign aide and former White House special assistant Boris Epshteyn, told the Washington Post. “Our efforts were focused on conveying that message.”

...In those first days in January, from the command center, Trump allies were calling members of Republican-dominated legislatures in swing states that Eastman had spotlighted in his memos, including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, encouraging them to convene special sessions to investigate fraud and to reassign electoral college votes from Biden to Trump, two of the people familiar with the operation said.

On Jan. 2, Trump, Giuliani and Eastman spoke to 300 state legislators via a conference call meant to arm them with purported evidence of fraud and galvanize them to take action to “decertify” their election results. “You are the real power,” Trump told the state lawmakers, according to a Washington Examiner report. “You’re the ones that are going to make the decision.”

A participant on the call, Michigan state Sen. Ed McBroom (R), recalled listening as Trump, Giuliani, Eastman and others described the power state legislators have over the certification of electors. “I didn’t need any convincing about our plenary powers,” McBroom told The Post. “I was listening to hear whether they had any evidence to substantiate claims” of significant voter fraud that could change the results in Michigan. The callers did not provide additional information, he said, and he did not support a delay in the electoral vote count.

But others appear to have been persuaded. Three days after the call, dozens of lawmakers from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin wrote to Pence. They asked that he delay certification of Biden’s victory for 10 days to allow “our respective bodies to meet, investigate, and as a body vote on certification or decertification of the election.”

Also on Jan. 2, Eastman, Giuliani and Epshteyn appeared on Bannon’s podcast to make the case directly to Bannon’s pro-Trump listeners. They discussed what Bannon called that day’s “all-hands meeting with state . . . legislators that the Trump campaign and also others are putting on.” The comments were first highlighted by Proof.

They argued that state lawmakers were legally bound to reexamine their election results. “It’s the duty of these legislatures to fix this, this egregious conduct, and make sure that we’re not putting in the White House some guy that didn’t get elected,” Eastman said. He contended that Congress could itself decide on Jan. 6 to select Trump electors in contested states, but that “it would certainly be helped immensely if the legislatures in the states looked at what happened in their own states and weigh in.”