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Comment by netsharc | Hacker News Reader

Why fantasize that the GOP isn't going to do a Putin/Erdogan/Suharto? Those countries have "democratic" elections and keep electing the same president, they must be hella great guys!

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There are clearly pockets that want to but I'm not sure there's enough support in important areas to actually have a coup like that succeed. Kind of have to wait and see how things develop.

It's not a coup if you stay in power illegally, it's a self-coup. 2020 was a coup attempt because Trump gave up power and then tried to give it back. He's not going to make that same mistake again. He'll just attempt to stay in power via self-coup.

Unlike coup's which are distinct events, self-coup's are usually shades of grey. They happen through democratic backsliding, which usually consists of a large number of small events. I'm sure we'll see some more before the next election. Will it be enough so that the US is as bad as Russia or Turkey? No. Will it be enough to keep Trump in power illegally? Perhaps.

You'd have to overthrow parts of the US government to keep power for a 3rd term I'd still call that a coup even if it's coming from inside the house. Coups rarely come from entirely external forces, the military basically always has a major role in deciding if a coup is successful even if it's just staying neutral and seeing where the chips fall.

Trump has already "overthrown" the executive on every major part of the US government using executive, judicial and legislative processes. Sometimes this has been illegal (ex FCC). Nobody calls it a coup.

They attempted to violently overthrow the US government by taking over Congress in 2021 and went so far as constructing a noose to hang their own vice president.

They suffered absolutely zero consequences for this and the perpetrators have now been pardoned with no political backlash.

Why exactly wouldn't they do this? Now that the SCOTUS says they're even immune from prosecution, you'd have to be an idiot not to try.

Said noose was some poorly tied nylon rope affixed to a rinky-dink prop gallows on the front lawn. It was some protestor’s prop, and a really shoddy one at that.

Most photos don’t convey the actual size of it, because they just focus on the top crossbar, but even so, you can see just how ineffective that “noose” would be. If you search for a photo that shows it in full, you will see that a person could easily stand underneath it. It’s too short, and it is visibly crooked. If you tried to hang someone, it wouldn’t work.

I seriously doubt the people who made it had any connection to the people who stormed the building.

> It was a bad noose prop, they were just threatening to murder elected officials if they didn't install the unelected dictator who directed them to do this.

> Sure, they were at the event where people violently broke through police, into the capital, into offices and the chamber, looking for public officials with zip ties while chanting for death to specific members of Congress and the vice president... But the people with this specific noose prop probably only had good intentions.

It feels like every political discussion has just become an absolute clown show.

>” But the people with this specific noose prop probably only had good intentions.”

I never said they had good intentions. What I am saying is that that noose and gallows were obviously never intended to be used. The construction and dimensions of it are comical.

The president, as head of arguably the most powerful military in the world, has enough military strength to enforce pretty much anything on anyone in the country if he wishes to.

Because their support will fall off a cliff when their charismatic (to them) cult leader is gone in 2028, they will have to realign or lose voters.

The optimistic case is that while they made noise about election fraud in 2020 no one was organized enough to try for a coup then, and it's not clear if they'll be able to get organized in time for 28

They definitely tried for a coup then. Forgot Jan 6 already?

The coup wasn't January 6. The coup was the "alternate electors" business, and pressuring Pence to accept them as legitimate.

January 6 was part of it (some of the crowd were shouting "hang Mike Pence" for a reason"), but January 6 was just the last gasp of it.

People don't give Mike Pence nearly enough credit for, first, refusing to go along with the "alternate electors" nonsense, and second, for not leaving the Capitol when the Secret Service tried to get him out of there.

> The optimistic case is that while they made noise about election fraud in 2020 no one was organized enough to try for a coup then

The fuck were you in 2020?

All they needed was Vance as VP to accept the alternate slate of electors and Trump would've won. Just run back that playbook in 2028.

Or, they could attempt that convoluted plan to have a legal third mandate by electing a president and vice that then resign to appoint Trump.

I feel like we'll understand more what they plan by seeing how they iterate towards it with the '26 midterms. The feds have already started requesting access to 2020's election data and access to the actual equipment. Is that because they want to protect democracy? [1] [2] [3]

So they are definitely getting more organized, and I personally feel that they're testing the waters to see how much they can get their hands on after the '26 midterms. If they are able to sow enough uncertainty about the '26 elections then they can build on that for 2028. If they go this direction, how many elections can they invalidate, especially if > 1/3 of the country believes 2020 was stolen?

[1] https://www.cpr.org/2025/06/13/federal-request-colorado-vote...

[2] https://stateline.org/2025/07/16/trumps-doj-wants-states-to-...

[3] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-doj-contacted-states-...

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