A coup by any other name5-24-2017 Scott Johnson
In the post “Trump agonistes” last week I noted what I saw in the news stories that have created the consuming controversies of the past few weeks:
hostile officials inside the executive branch of the government seeking the removal of Donald Trump from office. They are powerful. They lack any qualms about abusing their positions. They are determined. And they have the invaluable assistance of the
Democrats’ mainstream media adjunct.
With malicious intent, “current officials” inside the intelligence agencies with access to top secret information, for example, have passed it on under the cloak of anonymity to their friends in the mainstream media. Even “former officials” — i.e., former Obama administration officials — have gotten in on the act. (The source of their information is neither revealed nor apparent.)
The subversion of an incumbent Republican president by the intelligence community in the permanent government is is an old story, as is the role of the mainstream media. President Trump’s death struggle with his invisible opponents, however, has arrived early in his first term in office.
Victor Davis Hanson amplifies and elaborates on the contribution of the mainstream media angle in his long, indispensable NRO column “A coup by any other name?” We are thinking along the same lines; one section of Dr. Hanson’s column is headed “Trump agonistes.”
Here is the salient point regarding the media:
“The effort to remove the president is conducted by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the wire services, and the major networks. And we have seen nothing like it in our time. In the last six months, Americans have been told quite falsely so many untruths about the Trump administration by their news agencies that for all practical purposes, there is no such thing as a media as we once knew it.”
We wend our way inevitably to this destination: “We are now watching insidious regime change, aimed at removing the president of the United States not because of what he has done so far, but because of his personality and what he might do to the Obama agenda — and because for a variety of cultural reasons, our elite simply despises his very being.”
I would add as a footnote that Christopher Roach’s “Tales of a coup: What Trump can learn from Gorbachev” makes a good companion to the Hanson column.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/05/a-coup-by-any-other-name.php
