Yes, It Was a Coup. Here’s Why.
What Trump tried is called a “self-coup,” and he did it in slow motion and in plain sight.
By FIONA HILL
01/11/2021 03:15 PM EST
Since last Wednesday, people have been arguing what to call what happened at the U.S. Capitol – was it a riot? An uprising? An insurrection? I’ve been public in calling it a coup, but others disagree. Some have said it’s not a coup because the U.S. military and other armed groups weren’t involved, and some because President Donald Trump didn’t invoke his presidential powers in support of the mob that broke into the Capitol. Others point out that no one has claimed or proved there was a secret plan directed by the President, and that Trump’s efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election could never have succeeded in the first place.
These observations are based on the idea that a coup is a sudden, violent seizure of power involving clandestine plots and military takeovers. By contrast, Trump’s goal was to keep himself in power, and his actions were taken over a period of months and in slow motion.
But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a coup attempt. Trump disguised what he was doing by operating in plain sight, talking openly about his intent. He normalized his actions so people would accept them. I’ve been studying authoritarian regimes for three decades, and I know the signs of a coup when I see them.
Technically, what Trump attempted is what’s known as a “self-coup” and Trump isn’t the first leader to try it. Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of the first Napoleon) pulled one off in France in December 1851 to stay in power beyond his term. Then he declared himself Emperor, Napoleon III. More recently, Nicolas Maduro perpetrated a self-coup in Venezuela after losing the 2017 elections.
The storming of the Capitol building on Jan. 6 was the culmination of a series of actions and events taken or instigated by Trump so he could retain the presidency that together amount to an attempt at a self-coup. This was not a one-off or brief episode. Trump declared “election fraud” immediately on November 4 even while the votes were still being counted. He sought to recount and rerun the November 2020 presidential election so that he, not President-elect Joe Biden, was the winner. In Turkey, in 2015, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan successfully did the same thing; he had called elections to strengthen his presidency, but his party lost its majority in the parliament. He challenged the results in the courts, marginalized the opposition, and forced what he blatantly called a “re-run election.” He tried again in the Istanbul mayoral election in 2019 but was thwarted.
There’s a standard coup “checklist” analysts use to evaluate coups. We can evaluate Trump’s moves to prevent the peaceful transfer of executive power against it. To successfully usurp or hold power, you need to control the military and paramilitary units, communications, the judiciary, government institutions, and the legislature; and mobilize popular support.
Let’s see how well this applies to what Trump has done.
The Military: During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Trump drew Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper out of a White House meeting to follow him for a provocative photo op in front of an historic church. Paramilitary forces under the president’s command cleared a passage for his group across Lafayette Square. Trump was testing the military and the Pentagon to see if he could turn the U.S. armed forces into his own “Pretorian Guard.” The blowback from this episode emphasized the non-political position of the U.S. military, but there was sufficient lingering concern that just days before Jan. 6, 10 living former U.S. defense secretaries—including Esper, who had been forced out of his office for insufficient loyalty—felt compelled to issue an unprecedented public letter reminding Defense Department officials of their oath to uphold the Constitution.
Communications: In the old days, coup plotters would seize the Central Telegraph or Post Office, and later, radio and TV towers. Trump put a loyalist in charge of the Post Office. He did not take TV and radio by storm, but he discredited the “mainstream media” who were critical of his actions as the “Enemy of the People” and recruited or pressured FOX news, Newsmax, OAN, and social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook into participants in his efforts to sway public opinion in his favor. Twitter, in essence, was Trump’s equivalent of the TV and radio tower. He directly messaged the 88 million people who “followed” his account. He used social media and cable news to propagate false self-serving narratives, reinforce messages to provide justification for his actions, and mobilize his supporters.
The judiciary: With the help of Republican lawmakers, Trump stacked federal courts with what he kept calling “his judges.” He successfully pushed through the appointments of three new Supreme Court Justices ahead of the presidential election. He made his expectation clear that if the Supreme Court had to settle an election dispute, then “his justices” would tilt the verdict in his favor. Erdogan did the same in Turkey, purging the judiciary and installing loyalists who facilitated his re-run of the 2015 election and sentenced political opponents to long prison terms. Trump frequently called for investigations into his opponents and for courts and law enforcement to “lock them all up!”