Autopsy of a Dead Coup: Victor Davis Hanson's greatest work thus far

[Mesaclone]

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/17/autopsy-of-a-dead-coup/

Just an incredible journalistic piece about the attempted Palace Coup against a duly elected President of the United States.

Always been a big fan of VDH but I think this article may be the quintessential proclamation that this nation has suffered its first genuine attempted coup d' etat. This is Hanson's master work.

To be clear, VDH is not asserting the term coup as hyperbole...its not a metaphor for resistance. He is laying out with crystal clarity that there has been...and still is...a concerted and coordinated effort to overthrow and remove an elected US President through corrupt and illegitimate means. This is nothing less than the Left and its allies attempting to set aside the will of American voters simply because they disagree. Anyone touching this coup needs to be arrested and tried for treason...and I do not say that lightly...because once attempted, treason becomes habitual unless accompanied by strict justice.

Some key excerpts:

The Crown Jewel in the coup was the appointment of special counsel Robert Muller to discover supposed 2016 Trump-Russian election collusion. Never has any special investigation been so ill-starred from its conception.
Mueller’s appointment was a result of his own friend James Comey’s bitter stunt of releasing secret, confidential and even classified memos of presidential conversations. Acting DOJ Attorney Rod Rosenstein appointed a former colleague Mueller—although as a veteran himself of the Clinton email scandal investigations and the FISA fraudulent writ requests, Rosenstein was far more conflicted than was the recused Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Mueller then packed his investigative team with lots of Clinton donors and partisans, some of whom had legally represented Clinton subordinates and even the Clinton Foundation or voiced support for anti-Trump movements.


Another:
Left wing social media and mainstream journalism spread sensational lies about supposed maniacal Trump supporters in MAGA hats. They constructed fantasies that veritable white racists were now liberated to run amuck insulting and beating up people of color as they taunted the poor and victimized minorities with vicious Trump sloganeering—even as the Covington farce and now the even more embarrassing Jussie Smollett charade evaporated without apologies from the media and progressive merchants of such hate.

And another:
The team soon discovered there was no Trump-Russian 2016 election collusion—and yet went ahead to leverage Trump campaign subordinates on process crimes in hopes of finding some culpability in Trump’s past 50-year business, legal, and tax records. The point was not to find who colluded with whom (if it had been, then Hillary Clinton would be now indicted for illegally hiring with campaign funds a foreign national to buy foreign fabrications to discredit her opponent), but to find the proper mechanism to destroy the presumed guilty Donald Trump.

And finally:
The newly promoted McCabe apparently felt that it was his moment to become famous for taking out a now President Trump. Thus, he assembled a FBI and DOJ cadre to open a counterintelligence investigation of the sitting president on no other grounds but the fumes of an evaporating Clinton opposition dossier and perceived anger among the FBI that their director had just been fired. In addition, apparently now posing as Andrew McCabe, MD, he informally head counted how many of Trump’s own cabinet members could be convinced by McCabe’s own apparent medical expertise to help remove the president on grounds of physical and mental incapacity under the 25th Amendment. This was an attempted, albeit pathetic, coup against an elected president and the first really in the history of the United States.

[TomSea]

Yes, some Democrats have been absolute vermin and no one should vote for their party ever in general terms.  This is the dirtiest of all politics.

I wish Chris Christie had been made Attorney General and he should have.

People can moan about Sessions and so on. Someone appointed him. I actually liked Sessions a lot, he certainly disappointed.

[Mesaclone]

Yes, some Democrats have been absolute vermin and no one should vote for their party ever in general terms.  This is the dirtiest of all politics.

I wish Chris Christie had been made Attorney General and he should have.

People can moan about Sessions and so on. Someone appointed him. I actually liked Sessions a lot, he certainly disappointed.

I agree, Sessions was Trump's biggest mistake...a good man entirely incapable of filling the Attorney General position. 

[Right_in_Virginia]

This is an essay that needs to be read, digested, and parts read again. 

Autopsy of a Dead Coup
American Greatness, Feb 17, 2019, Victor Davis Hanson

The illegal effort to destroy the 2016 Trump campaign by Hillary Clinton campaign’s use of funds to create, disseminate among court media, and then salt among high Obama administration officials, a fabricated, opposition smear dossier failed.

So has the second special prosecutor phase of the coup to abort the Trump presidency failed. There are many elements to what in time likely will become recognized as the greatest scandal in American political history, marking the first occasion in which U.S. government bureaucrats sought to overturn an election and to remove a sitting U.S. president.

Preparing the Battlefield
No palace coup can take place without the perception of popular anger at a president.

The deep state is by nature cowardly. It does not move unless it feels it can disguise its subterranean efforts or that, if revealed, those efforts will be seen as popular and necessary—as expressed in tell-all book titles such as fired FBI Directors James Comey’s Higher Loyalty or in disgraced Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s psychodramatic The Threat.

In candidate and President Trump’s case that prepping of the battlefield translated into a coordinated effort among the media, political progressives and celebrities to so demonize Trump that his imminent removal likely would appear a relief to the people. Anything was justified that led to that end.


More:  https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/17/autopsy-of-a-dead-coup/

[Right_in_Virginia]

People can moan about Sessions and so on. Someone appointed him. I actually liked Sessions a lot, he certainly disappointed.

This essay has nothing to do with Sessions ... or who in the administration should have/could have stopped this.  By Jan 20,2017 this silent coup was well underway. 

This essay details the massive cooperation and coordination it took from every corner of the swamp. 

This is about unrelenting sedition.

[aligncare]

The evidence of coordinated subterfuge at top levels of the FBI is all there. Unless you hate Trump. Then evidence becomes ‘opinion’ and you can just argue that point till the cows come home.

Trump was framed by the FBI and defamed by the media. And the useful idiots on the NeverTrump net helped push the fabricated Russian collusion line by the deep state plotters and the willful democrat socialists.

Shameful that so many republicans and conservatives took the bait. Talk about working against one’s own interests!

[Right_in_Virginia]

Shameful that so many republicans and conservatives took the bait. Talk about working against one’s own interests!

I don't think they took the bait.  I think they were silent partners in the coup and were working for their perceived best interest --- the removal of President Trump.  Absent that, he would be allowed to remain as a wounded punching bag until Romney was ready.

[Sanguine]

Yes, some Democrats have been absolute vermin and no one should vote for their party ever in general terms.  This is the dirtiest of all politics.

I wish Chris Christie had been made Attorney General and he should have.

People can moan about Sessions and so on. Someone appointed him. I actually liked Sessions a lot, he certainly disappointed.

This transcends the Dem/Rep divide. As Hansen put it:

In sum, the Left and the administrative state, in concert with the media, after failing to stop the Trump campaign, regrouped. They ginned up a media-induced public hysteria, with the residue of the Hillary Clinton campaign’s illegal opposition research, and manipulated it to put in place a special counsel, stocked with partisans.

Then, not thugs in sunglasses and epaulettes, not oligarchs in private jets, not shaggy would-be Marxists, but sanctimonious arrogant bureaucrats in suits and ties used their government agencies to seek to overturn the 2016 election, abort a presidency, and subvert the U.S. Constitution. And they did all that and more on the premise that they were our moral superiors and had uniquely divine rights to destroy a presidency that they loathed.

[austingirl]

I agree, Sessions was Trump's biggest mistake...a good man entirely incapable of filling the Attorney General position.

 

[Cyber Liberty]

I don't think they took the bait.  I think they were silent partners in the coup and were working for their perceived best interest --- the removal of President Trump.  Absent that, he would be allowed to remain as a wounded punching bag until Romney was ready.

That describes Traitor Flake, right down to who he wanted to succeed President Trump.

[Emjay]

This essay has nothing to do with Sessions ... or who in the administration should have/could have stopped this.  By Jan 20,2017 this silent coup was well underway. 

This essay details the massive cooperation and coordination it took from every corner of the swamp. 

This is about unrelenting sedition.

Exactly right @Right_in_Virginia   Trump, himself, has admitted to inexperience and early mistakes.  Sessions may be one of those mistakes.

But the whole point of this article is something far deeper and scarier.

Great evil forces within our own government attempted a coup over the will of the people.

This is close to what happens in third world and communist countries.

We should all be horrified and a few people should end up in shackles.

[EdJames]

@Bigun

You will enjoy this excellent VDH work if you have not seen it yet.

[TomSea]

This essay has nothing to do with Sessions ... or who in the administration should have/could have stopped this.  By Jan 20,2017 this silent coup was well underway. 

This essay details the massive cooperation and coordination it took from every corner of the swamp. 

This is about unrelenting sedition.

Why did Sessions leave them? I did Trump let his displeasure be known then?

[aligncare]

VDH is probably the best political and policy commentator around, bar none...

And yet here is this brilliant column – recalling details, fact after fact, about the fall of the DOJ under Comey and then Rosenstein, the corruption of deep state actors and special counsel Mueller – all ignored by our local Trump critics.

Well, if you want to understand how the narratives generated by the deep state and amplified by their lap dogs in the media, affected the perceptions of Donald Trump, you must read this anatomy of the first failed coup d’eta attempt in American history.

Trump’s administration was done wrong, his character slandered, his accomplishments ignored, his supporters attacked – all on lies. Never forget this.

[Sanguine]

VDH is probably the best political and policy commentator around, bar none...

And yet here is this brilliant column – recalling details, fact after fact, about the fall of the DOJ under Comey and then Rosenstein, the corruption of deep state actors and special counsel Mueller – all ignored by our local Trump critics.

Well, if you want to understand how the narratives generated by the deep state and amplified by their lap dogs in the media, affected the perceptions of Donald Trump, you must read this anatomy of the first failed coup d’eta attempt in American history.

Trump’s administration was done wrong, his character slandered, his accomplishments ignored, his supporters attacked – all on lies. Never forget this.

That's not completely fair.  Most of the Trump detractors are very open in saying that this Mueller thing is an abomination.  There are just of few who are so fixated on "I hate Trump" that they act like they think the Mueller "investigation" is legitimate.

[aligncare]

That's not completely fair.  Most of the Trump detractors are very open in saying that this Mueller thing is an abomination.  There are just of few who are so fixated on "I hate Trump" that they act like they think the Mueller "investigation" is legitimate.

I don’t see any of their names and comments here on this thread. My point stands.

[Sanguine]

I don’t see any of their names and comments here on this thread. My point stands.

You can't use one data point to disprove your theory.

[Emjay]

I don’t see any of their names and comments here on this thread. My point stands.

Sorry ... and I mean I am really sorry, but I'm afraid you're right.  They are just too steeped in Trump hate to concede anything favorable about him, though they swear they do.

I just clicked on a thread wherein the last 20 posters think our country is doomed to become socialist and we have no possible chance to avoid it.  I wish I hadn't even come to this site this morning.