One of my many cataloged memories of the Trump era is from the run-up to the 2016 election, when one of my colleagues related to me what one of his sources in Brazil, fretful about Donald Trump’s rise, told him. “It’s OK for the world for Brazil to occasionally be a basket case nation,” he said. “But the thought of the U.S. becoming one is really disturbing.” This week, Trump addressed the U.N. General Assembly, cast in the role we once reserved for people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Muammar Qaddafi: the batshit egomaniac dictator (only this time, with nukes). It seems to me that we’ve well and truly failed the basket case test. But a new poll has given me some fresh worries on this front—and a concern that maybe too many of us have developed a little taste for misrule.
The survey was published this week by Liberal Currents and it sought to catch the mood of the Democratic electorate as Election Day looms. Much of what the poll found was downright anodyne: A plurality of respondents favor Kamala Harris as the presidential nominee in 2028; “economy, inflation & cost of living” wins as the respondents’ biggest issue they want a future Democratic president to tackle. But one result made me do a double take. Under the section, “Feelings about Trump leaving office,” respondents were asked, “If you woke up tomorrow morning and saw the following news headlines, how would you feel?”
One of the choices, “To ‘safeguard the Constitution,’ a group of U.S. military leaders have removed President Donald Trump from power and assumed control of the United States” earned a net approval of 31 percent, with 59 percent approving and 28 percent saying no. That’s not good! Now the reason I’m not completely disassociating is because the ways respondents answered the other choices were more rational: Impeachment was by far the favored choice of removing the president, at 80 percent net sentiment, followed by removal via the Twenty-Fifth Amendment at 77 percent, and “dying peacefully in his sleep” at 40 percent. Assassination—by far the most immoral and dangerous way Trump could leave office, for all the reasons I lay out here—was the only choice with a negative sentiment, as it should have.
Still, I’m sorry, but the approval number for a military junta taking over the United States is way, way too high. Folks, you do not want a military coup in the United States under any circumstances.
Perhaps one reason this idea polls so well is that we’ve recently had a sample taste of what it’s like to be under unconstitutional leadership and it led to a desirable outcome. During the January 6, 2021, insurrection and for about a fortnight after, the United States was for all intents and purposes governed by a weird triumvirate: Nancy Pelosi, Mike Pence, and General Mark A. Milley. Trump was, during this time, meaningfully constrained from exercising some of his constitutional authority, while this troika took it up. It can be argued, of course, that this may have been for the best. This interregnum eventually yielded to the Biden administration and its comparative normalcy. But for many people, myself included, it was still fairly unsettling. In many places around the world, such takeovers end badly.
This is perhaps why the basket case anecdote came flooding back in my memory banks, as Brazil’s history is demonstrative of why military coups d’état are a bad idea. If the Latin American nation is any guide, once you start having military takeovers, you tend to keep having them. As the Berlin Journal’s James N. Green recalls, “Since 1889, when the Brazilian army ousted Emperor Pedro II and established a republic, the armed forces initiated nine attempted takeovers, five of which were successful.” Brazilian history also teaches us that military takeovers can be very difficult to dislodge. “The last military intervention into Brazilian politics took place in 1964, with the explicit support of the U.S. government,” writes Green. “It led to a 21-year-long military dictatorship.”
I feel it should be obvious to most that a Trump-ousting coup would be an incredibly combustible event that would shatter the political landscape and lead to widespread uproar that would be difficult to contain. As I’ve noted previously, the MAGA movement is steeped in conspiratorial thinking and bound in cultlike devotion to Trump. Martyring him is thus a very bad idea. A military-style coup d’état would likely reinflame the passions that led to the January 6 insurrection, and serve as rocket fuel for the growing number of people who TNR’s Matt Ford says claim “a purported Second Amendment right to murder civil servants and assassinate elected officials.”
As TNR’s Tim Noah wrote earlier this week, one Trump-removal scenario that’s on the table comes down to the GOP’s long-term political thinking: Should Republicans get battered in the midterm elections, there could be a strong incentive to convince Trump to retire or quit and pass the torch early to Vice President JD Vance, so as to allow him two years to essentially run as an incumbent. If that’s the way it goes, so be it. Trump would, of course, have strong incentives to stay, as his becoming a private citizen again would immediately embroil him anew in any number of legal battles.
Barring that, the constitutional methods of removal that most Democrats thankfully seem to favor are the better options—though it seems that impeachment is, for Democratic leadership anyway, off the table. Perhaps it would be impractical for a newly empowered Democratic Congress to try impeachment for a third time (though they say that’s “the charm”). Still, it’s worth remembering that Republican senators had two shots to end a derelict presidency—once immediately after he sicced a mob on them—and they failed in their duty to oust Trump and bar him from holding public office. In this way, impeachment should remain a salient issue in this autumn’s Senate races: All of the miseries we are experiencing right now would never have happened if enough Republican senators truly loved their country.
It needs to be said that if Trump’s reign is to end prematurely—that is, before his stepping down on the next Inauguration Day—things won’t be peaches and cream. Even if it comes about through constitutional means, the U.S. will have to navigate a period of tumult. If we’re contemplating the end of the Trump presidency, rather than indulge in fantasies about a military coup, we should all contemplate how each of us, in our own way, might help reinforce the civic foundation and serve as good stewards of a nation of laws. Perhaps, as Noah writes, we’re within sight of Trump’s fall. We should not take such matters lightly, because if the fall is all that’s left, it matters a great deal.
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