Trump intensifies coup plot as Congress meets to certify election resultsrs ago
The United States Congress is meeting today to formally count the Electoral College votes in the 2020 presidential election. Under normal conditions, this process is a formality. Today’s vote, however, takes place under conditions of an active and ongoing effort by President Donald Trump to stage a coup d’état, nullify the results of the election and establish a presidential dictatorship.
Trump, with the active support of a majority of Republican House members and a substantial number of Republican senators, is seeking to block the certification of the votes. He declared on Tuesday that Vice President Mike Pence, who acts as president of the US Senate, “has the power to reject” electors. Such an act would be blatantly unconstitutional.
Speaking in Georgia on Monday, Trump declared, “They are not taking this White House. We are going to fight like hell.”
Outside of Congress, tens of thousands of Trump supporters are gathering in Washington DC, led by neo-fascist and paramilitary organizations such as the Proud Boys. On Tuesday, Trump lent his full support to the demonstrations and said he would speak at a rally in front of the White House Wednesday morning.
In the face of Trump’s active effort to overthrow the Constitution, the Democratic Party and its defenders are doing everything possible to conceal and downplay the threat posed by Trump’s actions. Their main concern is to avoid taking any action that might alarm the public and set into motion an oppositional movement that could get out of control.
On Monday, Biden called Trump’s efforts to overturn the election “whining and complaining.” He referred to a group of conspirators seeking to overthrow the constitutional order in the United States as “our opposition friends,” and he repeated his call for both sides to “unite” and “put the divisive politics behind us.”
More than just spinelessness and prostration, Biden’s remarks express a basic class reality. While they have differences, primarily centered on foreign policy, Trump and his Democratic opponents are, in the final analysis, representatives of the same capitalist class. As former president Barack Obama put it, the conflict is an “intramural scrimmage.” The Nation, the flagship publication of American left liberalism, with its historic association with Stalinism and Popular Front politics, exemplifies the Democratic Party’s efforts to lull the population to sleep.
Referring to Trump’s actions as “crazy,” the Nation declares categorically that Trump will not succeed in his coup attempt. “The good news is that Trump seems to have shot his bolt. He has enough juice left to create mayhem but not enough… to subvert the election.”
Another article in the Nation calls Trump’s actions a “clown coup” that is “doomed to failure.” It concludes, “Trump is diminishing in political power with every passing day and there is no need to make unrealistic claims about his ability to overturn the election.”
The Nation’s unshakable belief that everything in American politics will return to normal on January 20 is an expression of its faith in the impregnable nature of American capitalism. Inasmuch as it believes capitalism is invincible and invulnerable, it seems inconceivable to the Nation that there is any need for the ruling class to even consider carrying out a coup d’état.
This is the voice of sclerotic American liberalism. Without a program, its only response to the crisis of capitalism is to stick its head in the sand and hope that everything goes back to the way it was.
Speaking of the fascist street demonstrations that brought down the French government of Édouard Daladier in 1934, Leon Trotsky wrote:
The French people for a long time thought that Fascism had nothing whatever to do with them. They had a republic in which all questions were dealt with by the sovereign people through the exercise of universal suffrage. But on February 6, 1934, several thousand Fascists and royalists, armed with revolvers, clubs and razors, imposed upon the country the reactionary government of Doumergue.
Now too, fascist violence and extraconstitutional coup-plotting have become an objective factor in American politics.
Let us be blunt: Trump’s coup is not guaranteed to fail, and workers must take his threats with the utmost seriousness. He remains president for two weeks and is determined to use all the powers at his disposal—enumerated and unenumerated—in his effort to cling to power.
While the Democrats pull their punches, Trump is not afraid to draw blood. He speaks for sections of the ruling class arguing for a preemptive counterrevolution amid the greatest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s. He is warning the ruling class that time is running out: Either crush social opposition in the working class, or it will engulf you.
Anyone who believes that “it can’t happen here”—that the United States is immune from fascism and dictatorship—is blinding himself to the reality of the crisis of American capitalism. It not only can happen here, but it is happening here.
The commentary within the official media and the likes of the Nation is marked above all by its superficiality, as though Trump’s actions were caused by his mood swings. But Trump does not speak just for himself. The very fact that he has already gone so far means that a substantial section of the financial oligarchy is prepared to break with the trappings of democracy.
Ultimately, January 20 is just a date. Even if Biden were to limp into office, Trump would remain a dominant political figure in the United States, and there are others waiting in the wings to take his place. It remains unclear whether Republican-controlled states will even recognize a Biden presidency.
This crisis is unfolding against the backdrop of the expanding pandemic, which has already killed more than 350,000 people in the United States alone. Hospitals throughout the country are at capacity, and Los Angeles County has instructed paramedics to begin rationing care.
In the face of this disaster, all sections of the ruling class have doubled down on their policy of “herd immunity,” demanding that businesses remain open in order to continue pumping out profits. Amidst mass death and social misery, Wall Street continues its relentless rise, along with the wealth of the financial oligarchy.
These homicidal policies reflect a social order so unequal that the most basic interests of the oppressed classes cannot be taken into consideration in creating policy. The decay and putrefaction of American democracy is ultimately the expression of the crisis and death agony of American capitalism. And Trump is only the most visible symptom of the disease.
In the fight to defend democratic rights, just like the fight to save lives in the pandemic, the remedy is the same: The power of the financial oligarchy must be crushed and overthrown by a mass movement of the working class fighting for the socialist transformation of society.
Growing threat that Trump will provoke war with Iran to further coup plot
As President Donald Trump’s attempted coup d’état unfolds in Washington, the threat that the White House will provoke a catastrophic new war in the Middle East grows by the hour.
The Pentagon has concentrated immense firepower in the Persian Gulf in preparation for a military confrontation with Iran that could engulf the whole region, and indeed the world.
Sunday saw the extraordinary reversal of an order for the USS Nimitz carrier strike group to return to its home base in the United States. Instead, it was sent back to the Persian Gulf on the personal order of Trump following a White House meeting with his newly installed defense secretary, Christopher Miller.
An ex-special forces colonel, Miller replaced Mark Esper after the November 3 election as part of a wholesale purge of the civilian leadership at the Pentagon. Esper had provoked Trump’s ire by publicly opposing the invocation of the Insurrection Act and deployment of regular army troops to suppress anti-police violence protests last summer. Miller and his new deputy, Ezra Cohen, are part of a fascistic pro-Trump and fanatically anti-Iranian cabal that has been slotted into top positions at the Defense Department.
The Nimitz, carrying 90 fighter jets and accompanied by a flotilla that includes guided-missile destroyers, has been joined in deployment to the Gulf by the nuclear submarine USS Georgia, which is armed with cruise missiles and escorted by its own squad of warships.
These naval deployments have been supplemented over the past month with three overflights of the Persian Gulf by pairs of nuclear-capable B-52 Stratofortress heavy bombers, in what amount to dry runs for a devastating aerial bombardment of Iran.
The increasingly crowded and perilous waters of the Persian Gulf are also the apparent destination of an Israeli Dolphin class submarine that sailed through the Suez Canal late last month and a South Korean destroyer that has been dispatched following Iran’s seizure of a South Korean tanker. Iranian authorities charged that the tanker was leaking toxic chemicals. The incident has taken place amid a dispute between Tehran and Seoul over $7 billion in Iranian assets held by South Korea, formerly a major importer of Iranian oil. South Korea is now submitting to Washington’s “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign barring both oil and financial transactions with Iran.
Any clash between Iranian naval forces and the South Korean warship could trigger a war with the US, a military ally pledged to defend South Korea against any “external armed attack.”
For its part, Israel has seized upon Iran’s decision to resume enriching uranium to 20 percent levels at its underground Fordo facility to threaten war. While the increased enrichment is part of a series of measures taken by Iran in response to Washington’s unilateral abrogation of the 2015 nuclear accord between Tehran and the major powers, and Europe’s failure to challenge Washington’s sanctions regime, Tel Aviv has insisted that it is a preparation for producing nuclear weapons.
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, referring to the rising tensions surrounding the political crisis in the US, told reporters: “I don’t know if the situation will erupt. An eruption of the situation is a function of what will happen in these events. I must add that the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and the rest of the Israeli security forces are on alert and are well aware of what is happening in this front.”
Iran has charged that Israel is deliberately seeking to instigate a military confrontation before Trump leaves office. On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said, “New intelligence from Iraq indicate[s] that Israeli agent-provocateurs are plotting attacks against Americans” to provide Trump “with a fake casus belli.”
Pentagon chief Christopher Miller’s rationale for ordering the carrier Nimitz to reverse course and head back into the Gulf was alleged threats “against President Trump and other US government officials.”
The claim of Iranian “threats” was put in the context of January 3rd’s one-year anniversary of the US assassination of top Iranian leader Qassem Suleimani, who was targeted with a US drone strike shortly after arriving at Baghdad’s international airport for an official state visit.
The anniversary saw major demonstrations in Iraq, where marchers demanded the withdrawal of all US troops from the country, as well as protests elsewhere in the region. Despite Washington’s warnings of Iranian retaliatory attacks on the anniversary—providing a pretext for a US war of aggression—none materialized. Tehran reportedly asked pro-Iranian Shia militias in Iraq, whose own leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was killed in the same strike that claimed the life of Suleimani, to refrain from attacks on US forces and facilities on Iraqi soil.
In a Tehran press conference on Tuesday, Gholamhossein Esmaili, spokesman for the Iranian judiciary, told reporters that Iran has asked Interpol to issue a “red notice” for the arrest of President Trump and 47 other US officials responsible for the assassination of Suleimani. Previously, Interpol stated that it is not authorized to intervene in issues of a political or military character.
The threat of a US war in the Persian Gulf as part of a coup plot in the US is being taken very seriously by former senior British military commanders interviewed by the Independent. Maj. Gen. Jonathan Shaw, a former assistant chief of defense staff and British commander in Iraq, told the British daily that amid the mounting concerns over the coup attempt in Washington, “the possibility that Trump might launch an attack on Iran receives less attention, yet there are worrying indicators we should also take this threat seriously.”
He continued, “The first concerning sign is that the incoming Biden defense team have had their briefings by the Pentagon curtailed. Denying access to the incoming team breaks all the rules of party politics and good governance and threatens a dangerous discontinuity in defense over the handover period. But if you are planning on action that you know your successor would not approve of, then isn’t this exactly what you do?”
General Shaw added: “If a concerted attack on Iranian facilities were ordered, the tools are there to do the job. B-52 bombers, with supporting tankers and fighter escorts; the USS Nimitz carrier strike force. The USS Georgia transited the Straits of Hormuz into the Gulf, thus increasing both its potency and its vulnerability in the shallows, and the Israelis sending a Dolphin class attack submarine through the Suez Canal to join the US forces, albeit not in the Gulf itself. All Trump has to do is say the word.”
Gen. Sir Richard Barrons, the former chief of Joint Forces Command, told the newspaper that in addition to Trump, there are elements within the US military command that want a war with Iran. “The US military is divided to an extent on this. There is a section which is quite hawkish about Iran and see it as a threat. They are almost quasi-messianic in their attitude in this,” he said.
Clearly representative of this layer is Gen. Michael Flynn (ret.), Trump’s criminally convicted first national security adviser, who last month discussed with him the prospect of imposing martial law to overturn the election.
The joint statement by all 10 living secretaries of defense, Republicans and Democrats alike, published Sunday by the Washington Post, declaring that the Pentagon has no role in determining the outcome of the US presidential election, was an unmistakable indication that plotting to employ the military for just such a purpose is well advanced.
A war on Iran, with the potential for mass casualties among the tens of thousands of US troops deployed in the region, could provide Trump with the pretext for imposing martial law and refusing to surrender the White House.
While even the British generals recognize this threat, President-elect Joe Biden and the Democrats have raised no alarm, instead merely insisting that their being locked out of the Pentagon undermines a seamless handover of the US war machine. What they want to avoid, above all, is working people in the United States becoming conscious of the danger and taking the road of an independent struggle against it.
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