A Political Commentary: Coup Clucks Clan

By Terrance Afer-Anderson

Reflect for a moment please and consider those disturbing images from January 6, 2021, revealing a massive group of wildly passionate people scaling the walls of the U.S. Capitol. If that had occurred in any another country, the overwhelming majority of Americans would instantly define it as a coup.

Yet, what far too many Americans are negating is that most coups have a single leader and architect, most often deemed a dictator. There are copious examples of such in modern history: Muammar al-Gaddafi’s 1969 Libyan coup d’état; Idi Amin’s January 25, 1971 Uganda coup, as he faced arrest for misappropriating army funds; and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini 1979 Iranian Revolution.

A most noteworthy coup d’etat is the deposition of Myanmar’s National League for Democracy, which occurred on February 1, 2021, the day before its Parliament was to swear in members elected in 2020. Newly installed acting President Myint Swe declared the results of that November general election as invalid. Sound familiar?

We need also be mindful that Trump brazenly affirmed he would assume the role of a dictator on his first day in office. It is also worth noting that Trump signed over 20 executive orders and actions on his inaugural day, more than any previous U.S. president.

Now Trump, along with “President Elon Musk,” is very much indeed effecting a genuine, undeniable, immensely more comprehensive coup than what was attempted on January 6, 2021. He is dismantling and taking over the federal government via the dismissal of hordes of civil servants, seeking to replace them with political cronies. His Republican legions in the U.S. Congress have confirmed a cabinet populated with shameless sycophants, people so ill-equipped for their critical roles they are tantamount to a cabinet of clucks.

We also need make note that a signature action of a newly installed dictatorship is to assail, if not take complete control, of the media.

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In December 2024, then President-Elect Trump reached a $16 million settlement with ABC News, including an apology from “Good Morning America” co-host George Stephanopoulos, who had said Trump was found liable in the rape of writer E. Jean Carroll.

Trump is also suing CBS News for $10 million, alleging that it did a “partisan” pre-election interview with his opponent, then Vice-President Kamala Harris. Additionally, he has called both MSNBC and CNN as the “enemy of the people.”

Of course Trump’s pal Putin has a notorious history with news media. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that, “Thirteen journalists have been killed in contract style murders since Russian President Vladimir Putin took office.”

It is also worth noting that in a February 2017 NBC News interview, late Senator and Arizona Republican John McCain opined, “We need a free press. We must have it. It’s vital.” Referencing Trump’s proclivity to assail the media during his first term as president, McCain affirmed that dictators “get started by suppressing free press.”

That was certainly a tactic deployed by Adolf Hitler, a dictator in whom Trump has frequently been compared.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) observes, “Starting in January 1933, Nazi propaganda transformed Hitler from a party leader into the personification of the new German nation.” Yet, the Fuhrer didn’t stop there.

In practices startlingly similar to actions Trump has taken since assuming office, Hitler’s regime cracked down on political opponents, played on peoples’ prejudices, assailed civil rights, sought to destroy democracy.

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Still, Elon Musk is, arguably, the mastermind behind much of the evil that is currently being perpetrated on the American people. Though not an elected official, he recently audaciously conducted a press conference in the White House Oval Office and his leadership of the non-Congressionally sanctioned Department of Government Efficiency heralds a reckless era in U.S. government and history. ABC News reports that, thus far, the bogus agency has gained access to 15 federal agencies, that its team, principally consisting of people with no government experience, “have been going through data systems, shutting down DEI programs and, in some cases, whole agencies.”

And while this far-ranging coup d’etat is being implemented, this dangerous administration is seeking to quiet media voices unfettered in their zeal to call it out. Most recently, MSNBC Joy Reid has become its latest casualty. Yet, Reid, and many like her, will not be silenced. To quote late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”

Musk and Trump have assembled a clan of emissaries, feckless clucks, hell-bent on taking effecting a coup that will radically change American government and society. We must resist this “Coup Clucks Clan.”