One main thing would be not to alienate the military by attacking its heroes. A large part of why his coup could never be successful is that the military would never be on his side. But they very much could have been, given how much support (and outright veneration) he kept in the military despite attacking them. A Trump that got along with the top military brass would have been very powerful indeed.
Trump tended to alienate people indiscriminately, rather than strategically. A lot of his fanbase is about him alienating the right people, but there’s no reason for him to also alienate the wrong people.
And not just the official military. The pandemic would have been a great opportunity to create a private militia force loyal only to Trump.
Declare massive economic lockdowns to stop the virus, so millions are thrown out of work.
Then hire the worst of those people as Pandemic Patriot Patrolmen, who set up checkpoints to “control the virus”, and arrest anyone who travels without permission. Of course, most of these checkpoints will “naturally” be set up in the “most disease-prone areas”, which just happen to skew towards minority populations. Bingo, hundreds of thousands of minorities are now in jail, and lose voting rights.
He probably wouldn’t even have to steal the election. After 10 months of the PPP arresting any black or brown person they saw on the streets, very few would be willing to come out just to vote.
Drag out the Pandemic as long as possible, and people get used to this.
Having worked in the Soviet intelligence machine, Putin was well-positioned to poison Russia’s fledgling democracy, particularly after Yeltsin’s incompetence.
The challenge for an American president is taking apart a Democratic-Republican system with centuries of tradition behind it, which is why I think the odds of a hardcore dictatorship are rather low. What’s more likely is some sort of ethno-nationalist majoritarian party system that uses the legal system, the courts, police agencies, and if given time, the military to impose its will on people.
Trump’s own undoing was that his strengths were also his weaknesses. If you can ignore the fact that he’s a fraud in so many ways, his off-the-cuff personality gave him the appearance of authenticity - in the eyes of those who wanted to see that, anyway. But the other side of that lack of filter was impulsiveness and an inability to premeditate or calculate beyond whatever sensations he had in the moment, and that is what ultimately did him in.
Put someone in his position who has street cred as an “I don’t give a shit what my critics say about me” and who has enough ability to think his way out of some of his more complicated problems, and we’ve got a real problem.
Fortunately, I see someone in office now who’s doing all of the right things to help us move past the Trump era. Biden is staying out of the spotlight and coordinating different factions of the Democratic party to get shit done. The Biden era now reminds me an awful lot of the Jerry Brown era in California back in 2010, which is a good thing.
Yes, the United States has built up some institutional strength over the centuries which Russia unfortunately lacked.
On the other hand, as I have pointed out on numerous occasions, Trump is just a small part of an ongoing campaign (although he never saw himself that way). The Republicans have spent forty years dismantling the safeguards in our democracy. So while Trump wasn’t competent enough to make himself into an American dictator, I feel a more competent man could.
As you yourself noted the court system at the very least helped prevent him from pulling off a coup. And he had quite a few other losses as well, witness his consistent issues getting his “Muslim Ban” passed. The court system may not have fully hamstrung him (something it isn’t really designed to do, exactly), but it performed a damn sight better than the legislative branch.
I agree–Trump wanted the military on his side, but he did his best to alienate them at every turn. Dead, wounded, and captured US servicepeople are “losers,” and “suckers”; and the USS John McCain must have it name covered when Trump speaks before it.
This is what has been puzzling me for a while: why Trump supporters think the military would support him, given his above disdain for the military. I’m sure that as C-in-C, he has certain powers that the US military cannot ignore, but they only go so far, as I understand things.
But even prior to January 6, Trump supporters were sure he would institute martial law on the morning of the 6th. He would order the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines to round up every Democrat congresscritter (plus Joe Biden and Kamala Harris), and they would, on his orders. Then, each would get a show trial in a court-martial, after which, they’d be executed. (Holy USSR, Batman!) Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t believe that the US president has the power to put the United States under martial law (doesn’t that require Congress’ approval?), much less to order the arrest and courts-martial for political opponents. (Holy Stalinist USSR, Batman!)
Why were Trump supporters so hopped-up on martial law and courts-martial, despite the fact that Trump put down the military every chance he got (except for that July 4 flyby)? Why did they put so much faith in Trump’s supposed power to institute martial law? And why would political opponents require courts-martial, instead of civilian due process?
There are a lot of questions here, but if anyone can help, I’d appreciate it.
It’s because they assumed the majority of people in the military were as stupid as they themselves are. Sure, Trump said all the things you listed, but he also mouthed platitudes about how great he thought the military was, because throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks is what Trump does. His supporters are all masters at latching onto the one thing he said that they approve of, and ignoring all the things he said that directly contradicted that one thing. And they expect everyone else to do that same, no matter how obvious it is that Trump was just BSing.
It’s of a kind with his support for White Supremacy. They ignore everything he said about how great these guys were, and touted all the times he was forced to say out loud, “Oh, no, I don’t support white supremacy!” The Trumpers let themselves be fooled every time, and honestly don’t seem to understand that the rest of us weren’t fooled.
For the same reason that they thought that he had the biggest inauguration ever, that he drained the swamp, that he protected us from caravans of immigrants, that the election was stolen.
They don’t have even a passing familiarity with reality anymore.
Personally I cheered inside every time he insulted the military. I knew that his insulting attitude towards our armed forces made any sort of coup attempt on his part much harder.
That would be one of the biggest differences a competent tyrant would do, would be to make sure that the military was on his side.
Plus – fantasy fulfillment. Rounding up their enemies (i.e., anyone who disagrees with them) is what they would do, so of course they expected Trump to do it.
Quite to the chagrin of those who started that campaign. What they wanted was a republic run for-profit of the Right Kind of People™ , by someone picked from among themselves every 4 to 8 years; not personal strongman rule where the Big Guy can destroy any one of them at will. But they created the tools to enable that.
Even if Trump “had the military on his side”, the notion that the Department of Defense as a whole would support a coup attempt is risible. There is certainly a substantial contingent of white nationalists and racist among the enlisted troops, and there is the occasional nutjob like Michael Flynn in the senior officer ranks, but by and large career officers have a strongly instilled sense of duty to the country; even if they hold conservative beliefs (as many do) they aren’t going to participate in a violent overthrow or support an illegal order to impose martial law without cause, because career officers value their professional standing and know that they quickest way to lose pension, honors, and post-career consulting opportunities would be to participate in some kind of politically motivated act of questionable-at-best legality. This isn’t to say such an overthrow could never happen, but it would require a dramatic change in the mentality of senior leadership, and Trump engendered no respect from the military leadership that might lead to such a change.
Trump’s best bet at despotism would actually from below, to have his supporters essentially take over state governments, interfere with their independent electoral processes, and assign electors to appoint him president, eventually rescinding the XXII amendment. He’s not smart enough to have thought that through, or to even know anything about the electoral process that someone didn’t just tell him five minutes ago. “Man, woman, person…TV, camera.” This guy couldn’t lead a Boy Scout troop to a pizza parlor.
The simple answer is: Trump voters believe that what they want to see happen, is what will happen.
To give one example of their thought process, here’s a message I saw circulating around in the Trumposphere on Facebook before January 6 (paraphrased to the best of my memory):
“Here is the inside info on what is going to happen on January 6. Pence will have a “Dominion voting machine” rolled into the Senate chamber. He will run a “count” of the electoral votes from the Dominion machine. The “tally” will proclaim Trump the winner, by a larger margin than the number of electoral votes even possible to be cast in the first place. Democrats in the Senate will erupt in mayhem. Pence will then promptly declare the vote count over and Trump officially reelected as president, saying that the results cannot be undone. Trump is a showman and he wants this to go down theatrically, hence why he is doing it this way.”
It’s true that the judiciary was effective when it came to the actual elections. Throughout most of Trump’s term, what we saw with the judiciary was that they could rule against Trump, but the only consequence if Trump decided to defy them was impeachment… which put things back in the legislature. I think effectively the thing we all learned in school about the 3 co-equal branches is basically not true in current times - the legislature can’t really act against the president unless they have an uncharacteristic amount of unity, and the judiciary can’t really act against him unless they get cooperation from the legislature.
At least election results are something that remained relatively intact but I don’t think there’s anything baked into our system that will protect them from a smarter Trump.
The problem is most Republicans now place loyalty to the Republican Party ahead of loyalty to the United States. Doesn’t matter if we’re talking about Republican voters, Republican legislators, Republican judges, Republican governors, or Republican presidents.
The only thing unusual about Trump is he placed his loyalty to himself ahead of his loyalty to the Republican Party.