Biden dropping out is not a coup, but what Trump did after 2020 election was!

GOP pretends to care about Democratic voters

It’s a “coup!” declared hysterical Republicans.  Were they talking about Donald Trump’s efforts after the 2020 election to overturn the election for which he’s currently facing criminal charges in both federal court and Fulton County, Ga?!

Nope! What Republicans from JD Vance down were calling a “coup” was President Biden dropping out of the 2024 race. (I’m serious!)  Arkansas US Senator Tom Cotton wrote on X shortly after the news broke, “Joe Biden succumbed to a coup by Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Hollywood donors, ignoring millions of Democratic primary votes.”  “The coup is complete,” wrote Trump loving Representative Paul Gosar from Arizona. That was followed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene who also echoed the claim we witnessed a “coup” with Biden dropping out.

Talk of a coup even made it all the way to the top of the 2024 GOP presidential ticket when—in an interview that aired Monday--Fox News host Jesse Watters asked Trump and his running mate JD Vance, “Is it a coup against Joe Biden?” Vance responded point blank, “Yeah, I think it is.” Trump though—perhaps reflecting on what he did after the 2020 election—was uncharacteristically sheepish, offering Watters only this two word answer: “Sort of.”

Back on planet earth, we know that Biden made the decision to drop out for the same reason politicians have chosen to end their campaigns since time immemorial. As NBC News reported, in reaching his decision, Biden reviewed along with his family and top aides extensive polling data, including how Vice President Kamala Harris would fare in a potential matchup against Trump. It’s true Biden was not happy with the growing calls to drop out after his deeply troubling debate performance three weeks before. However, as NBC News noted At the end of it all, “Biden came grudgingly to accept that he could not sustain his campaign with poll numbers slipping, donors fleeing and party luminaries pushing him to exit.”

That led us to Sunday afternoon when Biden released a letter that informed the nation, “While it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.” (President Biden is addressing the nation on Wednesday night where we will find out even more of the details.)

That’s not a coup. That is what American politics and democracy have long looked like. True, given it was a president dropping out only a little more than a hundred days from the election, it was both jarring and history making. But at the end, Biden made what he believed was the best choice for himself, his family, his party and his country.

In contrast, if Trump had followed that same path after losing the 2020 election and had simply accepted his loss, that too is what American politics has long looked like. But as we all lived through, that didn’t happen.

Trump attempted a coup in every sense of the word. Despite losing the 2020 election, he attempted to overturn the results to remain in power. That is why the federal indictment against Trump charging him with four felonies states, “Despite having lost, the Defendant [Trump] was determined to remain in power.”   To that end as the indictment continues, Trump “pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.”

Trump’s “criminal scheme”--as the indictment describes--included replacing legally elected electors to the Electoral college with fake ones chosen by his campaign to deliver Trump the victory he didn’t actually win. Trump’s illegal plan also included preventing Congress on Jan 6 from certifying the legitimate votes cast for Joe Biden--despite Trump losing every court battle to invalidate these very votes.

Then there was the brutal Jan 6 attack on our Capitol, which FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress was an act of “domestic terrorism.” As the Jan 6 House committee’s final report put it: “The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed,” adding, “None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”

That is what a coup attempt looks like, not what Biden did by dropping out. In fact, when challenged, Republicans can’t even defend the BS “coup” claim as we saw Tuesday on CNN when Sen. Cotton was confronted about this very point. That’s when anchor John Berman asked, “So why call this a coup and not January 6th?” In response, Cotton gave a meandering answer that included, “George Clooney, Hollywood moguls, Wall Street bankers all working behind closed doors to bring unbearable pressure to bear on Joe Biden.”

Cotton was again pressed on the issue with the anchor stating, “You use the language coup, and again, you’ve never said that for January 6^th,” adding, “As far as I know, no cops were beaten up. No one defecated in the Capitol. There was no criminal trespass in terms of changing the Democratic candidates, were there?” In response, Cotton quickly evaded the question and instead began spouting comments about VP Harris not prosecuting people when she was a District Attorney nearly two decades ago.

So the same Republicans who helped Trump with his attempted coup are now pretending to care about Democratic voters. This coup claim is as baseless and hypocritical as GOP Speaker Mike Johnson claiming that Biden dropping out is now “invalidating votes” of millions of Democrats who cast a ballot for Biden in the primary.  Johnson professing that he now cares about Democratic voters is laughable given he played a visible role in trying to help Trump convince  the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the votes of millions of people who voted for Biden in the 2020 election.

The goal of the GOP with the coup talk was apparently designed to divide Democrats by trying to create the narrative that Biden was unjustly forced out. It’s not working as the off the charts excitement and enthusiasm for Harris confirms.

But what the GOP has accomplished is making their 2024 presidential nominee a man who literally attempted a coup. And between now and election day we need to make sure our fellow Americans are aware of how dangerous Trump and MAGA are to our democracy.

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