The US government is never going to be overthrown, right? People don't even think about forcibly removing the president from office the way the leaders of some other countries have been deposed over the years. Well, some bankers did talk about removing FDR at the height of the Great Depression, but that plot didn't get very far.But imagine a crazy America, one where the new president, a notoriously temperamental and dishonest oligarch, had just won a squeaker of a victory after an election that amounted to a year and a half of bitter struggle for the entire country. This president faces fights from a media he loathes and regularly attacks, his government's own intelligence agencies, a mass protest movement, an opposition that questions his legitimacy, and members of his own party who strongly disagree with him on some issues.
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Meanwhile, this president has broken precedent by appointing several former generals to help run the government. One of these generals is almost universally supported by the same media outlets who oppose the new president. Add this all up—the unpopularity, the unrest, the generals, the feuding with the deep state—and if it were any other country, you'd normally ask if there was a coup on its way.Experts who study coups don't think one is in the cards for the US. Natasha Ezrow, a senior lecturer on government at the UK's University of Essex and a commentator on authoritarianism, emphasized that "a coup is completely unlikely." Tom Ginsburg, a scholar of coups and professor of law at the University of Chicago, felt the same way as Ezrow—he published a paper to that effect earlier this month. But, he added, "We're at this moment where it's very good to be considering these things."Bearing in mind that a coup is not about to happen, Ezrow and Ginsburg helped me game out this crazy hypothetical. So here's how a coup would go:Joseph Wright, associate professor of political science at Pennsylvania State University, found the whole concept too insane to even discuss in depth. For the seeds of a coup to even exist, it would have to seem like it was universally regarded as possible and a good idea, he explained, and in Washington, DC, a coup d'etat is not on anyone's list of things that are possible. His point highlights the incredibly rare and specific circumstances that might lead to a coup even making sense in the United States."The only type of coup that I foresee happening in the US," Ezrow told me, "is something that would take place behind-the-scenes with key members of the military and key Republican elites agreeing that Trump would need to step down, resulting in Trump resigning." By her reasoning, the military would be the force behind the coup, but they would immediately hand power over to Vice President Mike Pence, or—if Pence remains loyal to his boss—House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Step 1: Everyone Opposes the President
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But what if they asked Trump nicely to step down, and he didn't want to?Congress, now allied with the military in this hypothetical, would still have other tools at its disposal, like impeachment—which is slow and unreliable—or a declaration that the president is unfit to carry out his duties under the 25th Amendment. The coup would have to seem like a better option than these. For that to be the case, the president would have to have signaled that he wouldn't step down, even if asked to resign.Now presumably, Trump could be forced to leave without a coup taking place. After all, the Secret Service would presumably side with the military if Trump were unpopular enough to create all these rumblings of dissent. Trump would need to surround himself with a loyal presidential guard entirely under private control. (As it happens, during the transition, Trump did just that.)"If you had the military and the Congress together they could do pretty much anything they wanted to," Ginsburg told me. But once a careful plan for overthrowing the president existed, he suggested that the plotters would still need a global-level emergency to justify the suspension of democracy.Trump would have to do something that threatened humanity to catalyze an uprising. "Nuclear war with China or something," Ginsburg suggested. Basically, Trump would have to start a world war that no one wanted. The coup—if it's going to succeed—would likely be an attempt to demonstrate to the world that this isn't our guy anymore.This means that those who carry out the coup make a big public show of being more reasonable and logical than Trump. They would have to represent stability and order, because the whole thing would make Americans very, very nervous.
Step 2: Every Other Option Has Been Exhausted
Step 3: The Military Tells Trump He's Not President Anymore
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Step 4: The Coup Plotters Make Their Pitch to America
Step 5: There's Pushback from Trump Supporters
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As long as the courts back the coup, any Trump supporters who take to the streets and exercise a very literal interpretation of their Second Amendment rights—to form a militia and fight government tyranny—don't stand much of a chance. The federal government is usually hesitant to use force against armed groups like the Bundys, but those groups never pose an existential threat to the dominant regime. "If it were really a high-stakes situation where they thought their regime was at risk, they would've been toast," Ginsburg said.In this case, Trump may be rich enough to hire mercenaries to fight for him, and his support among the members of military indicates that he'll have some trained soldiers willing to join any anti-coup effort. But if the country's top brass is united against Trump, his fighting force, whoever it is made of, would eventually have to surrender."If the leader clings to power, they are usually killed," Ezrow told me. "Unless an assassination has taken place, there is usually an ultimatum allowing the leader to vacate and live a life in exile, if they are willing to step down peacefully."Ginsberg begs to differ about exile: "When you're doing a coup, you want to definitely isolate the leader, and you want to presumably have him under your control. I don't think there'd be any reason to exile him in the United States." Instead, he told me, if the president were still alive, "You'd have to somehow charge him with some crimes and lock him up."
Step 6: Trump Stages His Last Stand
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