Trump Threatens Election Day Coup: Into the Streets! Shut It Down!
https://socialistaction.org/2020/10/24/trump-threatens-election-day-coup-into-the-streets-shut-it-down/
October 24, 2020
By JEFF MACKLER
President Donald Trump responded on Sept. 23 to a reporter’s question
“Win, lose, or draw in this election, will you commit here today for a
peaceful transfer of power after the election?”
Trump said, “We’re going to have to see what happens…We want to get rid
of the [mail-in] ballots, and we’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t
be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation.” Trump subsequently
repeated his threat to declare himself president on Election Day,
apparently based on his presumption that his personal rejection of
counting mail-in and absentee ballots will ultimately be upheld by the
U.S. Supreme Court.
The spectacle of some dozen U.S. TV stations broadcasting election
returns on November 3 while Trump’s White House simultaneously prepares
its own count, is almost beyond belief. Yet, if would-be dictator Trump
takes this route there is zero doubt that we will see a massive protest
mobilization of unprecedented proportions in the streets of the nation.
Anticipating such a mobilization the threatening Election Day coup
plotter bigot Trump has announced his response in advance. He intends to
interpret the 1807 Insurrection Act as empowering him to deploy the
U.S. military and federalized National Guard troops to brutally repress
demonstrators across the country who insist on the constitutional right
to peacefully protest and insist on the right of the people to vote.
Such were Trump’s stated intentions a few months ago when he called on
his top general, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark Milley, Secretary of
Defense Esper and an entourage of government officials to personally
accompany him in a walk across Lafayette Square, adjacent to the White
House, to St. Peters Church for a one-minute photo op, bible in hand. A
few blocks away his National Guard troops viciously gassed and
brutalized thousands of peaceful protestors, including several media
reporters. Assembled on the outskirts of the city were federal troops
awaiting Trump’s call while Pentagon helicopters flew low overhead to
intimidate the peaceful demonstrators.
A few hours earlier a frightened and panicked Trump had ordered his
security staff to escort him and his family to safety into the bunkers
deep beneath the White House. No doubt the cowardly Trump felt a
compulsion to counter his subterranean disappearance with an immediate
display of “courage.” Milley and Esper soon after disassociated
themselves from Trump’s mini-parade as well as his stated intention to
invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the already assembled armed
federal troops. But Trump has never retreated from this threat.
Brute force and violence remain embedded in the president’s contemplated
arsenal of repression as in his repeated threats to call in federal
troops to repress anti-racist supporters of Black Lives Matter in
Oregon, Wisconsin and elsewhere, not to mention his giving the high sign
to overtly racist, neo-fascist groups who thrill to his lending them
legitimacy.
Trump’s parallel efforts to retain the presidency include defunding the
Post Office to limit the timely distribution and counting of mail-in
ballots. His generalized support to voter suppression measures, if not
the outright theft of votes, largely aimed at Black, Latinx and Native
Americans communities, permeate the U.S. election system. The Electoral
College itself operates to undermine the right of the majority to decide
the presidency.
The fact that U.S. elections are largely limited to the parties of the
corporate elite, that ballot access and access to the corporate media
are similarly and severely restricted, further testifies to the system’s
base failings. No question, the Democrats too, where they hold state and
local majorities, regularly rig the electoral system to their advantage.
President Trump’s Nov. 3 intended measures to declare himself both the
official vote tabulator and president are tantamount to a declaration of
a personal coup, that is, the abrogation of a fundamental democratic
right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Such an action can only be
considered a Trump effort to declare and establish a U.S. dictatorship,
presumably to be backed by either the Supreme Court and/or by his
Insurrection Act-deployed federal troops.
If and when Trump’s threat becomes a reality, we see no alternative but
the full national mobilization of all democratic-minded working people
in the streets to shut down the nation entirely, including the closure
of all government and corporate institutions via united and coordinated
strike actions and related mass protests. Only an undertaking of this
magnitude – deploying the mass power of the people to insist that the
election results be fully tallied and formally declared – can be
realistically expected to compel Trump’s full retreat, not to mention
his repudiation and punishment to the full extent of the law.
U.S. capitalism today already faces a crisis of legitimacy. Its inherent
racism, sexism, compulsion to endless wars and economic inequality, its
mad rush to global warming catastrophe and its incapacity to address the
COVID-19 pandemic are magnified its twin parties mired in an electoral
shit fight.
No to a Trump Coup Dictatorship! Prepare to Shut It Down! Into the Streets!
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“Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm
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― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Works Of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. Iii
