https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/25/politics/trump-attempted-coup/index.html
Trump defends claiming there was an attempted 'coup'
By Kate Sullivan, CNN
Updated 2137 GMT (0537 HKT) April 26, 2019
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Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump on Thursday called 2016 texts between former FBI officials evidence of an attempted "coup" after a news report showed they were discussing people inside the Trump administration who they could "develop for potential relationships."
And on Friday, he defended the remarks.
Trump was responding to a Fox News report about the texts exchanged between former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and former FBI agent Peter Strzok. The President immediately claimed the text messages were evidence of a plot against him, but the Fox News report notes that it "was not clear from the messages whether Strzok and Page merely sought to build bridges with the incoming administration, or wanted to engineer the briefings to investigate Trump and his associates."
"Really it's a coup, it's spying," Trump told Fox News in an interview, adding that Strzok and Page, were "trying to infiltrate the administration."
Speaking to press at the White House Friday, Trump sought to justify his coup claim.
"Oh, I think absolutely (there was a coup)," Trump said. "If you look at what's been happening, and all the things you've been seeing with the insurance policy statement from two agents that are now gone, if you look at many of the elements of intrigue and, frankly, we're going to be seeing a lot over the next couple of weeks, things that a lot of people haven't seen what took place here was a very, very terrible situation."
In congressional testimony last summer, Strzok defended a text message he sent about Trump potentially being elected, saying "we will stop it." Strzok said the text was "in no way, unequivocally, any suggestion that me, the FBI, would take any action whatsoever to improperly impact the electoral process, for any candidate." He later said that "at no time in any of these texts did those personal beliefs ever enter into the realm of any action I took."
In her testimony to Congress, Page also said the professional decisions she and Strzok made were not connected to the personal text messages they exchanged.
Trump said Page and Strzok "were dirty cops" and "sick people" and claimed, "this was an attempted overthrow of the United States government."
"I think it's far bigger than Watergate, I think it's possibly the biggest scandal in political history in this country, maybe beyond political," Trump said.
It's another example of the President going on Fox News and using inflammatory rhetoric to describe the investigation into his campaign. Last month, following the release of Attorney General William Barr's letter summarizing special counsel Robert Mueller's report, Trump called the investigation an "attempted take over of our government" and accused Page, Strzok and "hundreds of others" of treason.
Trump has frequently criticized a series of text messages Page exchanged with Strzok, in which they disparaged him as a then-presidential candidate. Both Page and Strzok were involved in the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information, in addition to the early days of the bureau's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and briefly served on special counsel Robert Mueller's team.
Allies of the President have previously latched onto the texts between Strzok and Page without context. Conservatives previously speculated about a nefarious "secret society" at the FBI stemming from a text exchange, only to later learn it was a reference to a gag gift of Vladimir Putin-themed calendars that one of the employees purchased for those working on the early stage of the Russia investigation.
Later, allies of the President pointed to a text from Page in September 2016 that said "potus wants to know everything we're doing," alleging -- without any corroboration -- it proved President Barack Obama had demanded information about the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information.
Strzok was dismissed from Mueller's team once the text messages were uncovered by internal investigations. Page left the team before the text messages were discovered.
Trump later listed a number of his other critics from the FBI and the rest of the intelligence community, all of whom served under President Barack Obama and were involved in the early days of the investigation into Trump's campaign, as potentially being a part of a conspiracy against him.
"Let's see what happens with (former acting FBI Director Andrew) McCabe and (former FBI Director James) Comey and (former CIA Director John) Brennan and (former Director of National Intelligence James) Clapper," Trump said, adding, "let's see how high it goes up."
Trump also touched on a number of other topics during his lengthy interview on Fox News, including applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court related to the Russia investigation and his campaign.
Trump's congressional allies have been pushing him to declassify the applications to the court for a month, accusing those in the senior ranks of the Justice Department and FBI of being biased against the President.
On Thursday, Trump said he plans to grant their request.
"Everything's going to be declassified," Trump said. "And I'm glad I waited."
Congressional allies who have been pushing the President to do this have privately expressed hope that he would renew efforts to declassify these documents now that the Russia investigation is over and doing so can't be perceived as undermining an ongoing probe. Trump had said previously that he would declassify the FISA applications but was persuaded not to last year.
CNN's Maegan Vazquez, Laura Jarrett, Kaitlan Collins, Clare Foran, Sophie Tatum and Sarah Westwood contributed to this report.
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-rhetoric-failed-coup-undemocratic-1430211
Why Trump Keeps Talking About a Failed Coup | Opinion
Brian L. Ott
On 5/20/19 at 9:30 AM EDT
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Opinion Donald Trump
On Sunday, May 12, 2019, Trump sent a three-part tweet quoting Tom Fitton, president of the right-wing conservative foundation Judicial Watch, accusing the FBI and Democrats of “an illegal coup” to overthrow the president. Sadly, this is not the first time Trump has invoked the idea of a failed “coup” to characterize the legitimate and legal investigations being conducted into his abuses of power and potential criminal behavior.
At the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association (NRA) in Indianapolis on Friday, April 26, 2019, for instance, President Trump—commenting on the Mueller investigation—told conference goers, “They tried for a coup, didn’t work out so well. And I didn’t need a gun for that one, did I?” This was the second time in two days that Trump had invoked the language of a failed coup against his administration.
Trump’s claim to have thwarted a coup is perhaps his most dangerous and undemocratic rhetoric to date, and that is really saying something given that President Trump consistently stokes racial resentment, encourages political violence against his enemies, calls for censorship of the news media, and undermines the rule of law.
To understand why Trump’s rhetoric of a failed coup is so dangerous, let me say a few words about rhetoric and how it works. Contrary to popular perception, rhetoric is not empty. At its core, rhetoric carries and conveys both meanings and emotions.
The meaning of a message frames how we understand the world. It urges us to view and think about people and events in particular ways. The emotion of a message moves us at a bodily level. It urges us to feel about people and events in particular ways. Together, the meanings and emotions conveyed by rhetoric shape not only how we make sense of people and events, but also how we respond to them. All of this is by way of saying, that rhetoric has tangible, real-world, material consequences.
What, then, are the consequences of Trump’s persistent lie about a failed coup? To answer this question, we need to examine three aspects of what Trump has said.
Consider, first, the meaning of the word “coup.” A coup, by definition, is a violent, illegal, and sudden overthrow of a government by a political faction, military, or dictator. Nothing of this sort is happening in the U.S. So, in invoking this term, Trump is asking Americans to view the Mueller investigation and now congressional investigations as illegal attempts to violently overthrow the government. Trump urges citizens to perceive Mueller and anyone else who criticizes him not as reasonable people who disagree with him or who have uncovered wrongdoing, but as anti-government forces bent on forcibly imposing their will on us.
Consider, second, the emotional valence of the word “coup.” Leaders who confront and defeat actual coup attempts often respond by executing those involved in the coup. In characterizing Mueller and Congress’s lawful investigations as an attempted coup, Trump urges his followers to be outraged at his critics, to literally be filled with anger and rage at them. In stirring this rage, Trump implicitly sanctions violence and retribution against his critics.
If this seems like a stretch, consider, third, Trump’s further comments about a so-called coup in his speech to the NRA, “ I didn’t need a gun for that one, did I?” The clear suggestion here is that while he did not need a gun to put down this particular coup, there may come a day when he and his followers may need guns to put down those who disagree with them. Is there anyone who believes that if the 2020 presidential election is close that Donald Trump will not contest the results or worse?
The rhetoric of a coup is not inert or innocent. Rather, it invokes meanings and emotions designed to justify violence against people who criticize the president. If we cannot criticize our leaders without fear of violence and retribution, then democracy truly has died.
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Brian L. Ott , a professor of communication studies and director of the TTU Press at Texas Tech University, is co-author, with Greg Dickinson, of The Twitter Presidency: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of White Rage.
