Is Trump’s America in the middle of a coup?
Years of covering power struggles and civil wars leads world affairs editor Sam Kiley to question whether Donald Trump is intentionally taking the establishment apart on his own home turf
In conducting a coup in an impoverished, undeveloped nation, there is a basic to-do list. You capture the presidency, the courts, take over the international airport, emasculate the legislature, decapitate the military of potential opponents, storm the local TV station and declare a new dawn.
Bigger countries require more effort, like the mass mobilisation of xenophobia through false-flag attacks and terror scares, but from Moscow to Monrovia, the patterns are the same – an autocrat takes power in the name of national salvation.
With Donald Trump in power for a little over four months, questions are swirling as to whether this process is happening to what was the most powerful democracy on Earth.
When he refused to accept he lost the 2020 elections and his supporters stormed the Capitol, and were later jailed, he pardoned them all. Now America’s constitution is again under threat from what many critics are calling an internal coup d’etat. Driven, perhaps, because the president has openly considered a Trump 2028 campaign for a third, unconstitutional, term.
While he was duly elected to his office for a second time last November, every check and balance to the power of the US presidency as enumerated in the constitution has been, or is being, challenged – a notion only heightened by the drumbeat of declarations from White House insiders of an “insurrection” in Los Angeles.
As protestors took to the streets against the mass arrest of alleged illegal immigrants, Trump lost little time in ordering 700 US marines and thousands of national guard troops onto the streets of Los Angeles.
Californian governor Gavin Newsom described the move as “deranged” which would only serve to inflame tensions on the west coast.
The governor declared: “Democracy is under assault. The moment we feared has arrived.
“Take time. Reflect on this perilous moment a president, bound by no law or constitution, perpetuating a unified assault on American traditions.”
His words came only hours after Trump warned anyone contemplating protesting during his military parade on 14 June that they would be met with “very heavy force”.
Trump’s to-do list in taking on – and taking down – the establishment has already been largely ticked off.
First he moved against the military and intelligence services whom, during his first presidency, he blamed for holding back his agenda and for failing to back the “protesters” who invaded the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.
Mark Milley, chair of the joint chief of staff during Trump 1.0, lost his security detail and the pre-emptive pardon he’d been given by outgoing president Joe Biden after he was threatened with prosecution by Trump.
Trump then fired his successor, air force general Charles Brown, and the head of the US Coast Guard, Linda Fagan. They were axed, the administration suggested, because they were diversity, equity, and inclusion hires. Nothing in their backgrounds indicates they were anything but qualified for the top jobs, but the messaging was clear from the White House – we want our own people.
But they must be loyal above all – so General Timothy Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command, has also gone along with the head of Naval operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti. No reason was given for Haugh’s dismissal in April.
Trump told reporters on Air Force One at the time: “We're always going to let go of people – people we don't like or people that take advantage of, or people that may have loyalties to someone else.”
Moving on, the FBI boss Christopher Wray was replaced with Kash Patel, an avid Trump loyalist who has failed to produce a budget for his agency this year. The new deputy director Dan Bongino is a podcaster who peddled the lie that Trump won the 2020 presidential election.
The director of National Intelligence is now Tulsi Gabbard, who has been an apologist for Vladimir Putin and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News contributor, is secretary of defence and famed for his attacks on Volodymyr Zelensky, Nato, and for using his personal phone to transmit state secrets.
Incompetence among cabinet members and top officials means that Trump knows they owe their place in his orbit to him alone. Each of these leaders has purged their own departments and replaced professionals with apparatchiks.
The federal bureaucracy has been hammered by Trump’s redefinition of more than 50,000 civil servants and “political hires”, allowing for him to impose pre-vetted loyalists in the executive heart of the government.
Opposition to a coup will often come from the judiciary and universities. Trump has moved to stifle both.
Top academies like Harvard and Colombia have been threatened with or have lost federal funding worth billions for pushing back at Trump’s attempts to control their intellectual life. Foreign students are being banned.
Students and academics who have supported Palestinian rights have been accused of backing terror groups like Hamas and fired, expelled or deported. The issue here is focussed on Israel and alleged antisemitism but again, the message is clear – free speech is over.
Of course, none of this could have been achieved without the active support of the US Congress and Senate which is supposed to check the worst of executive power. But with Republican majorities in both, Trump has been given a free rein.
And Republicans who do not subscribe to Trump’s vision in Congress are often living in fear of criticising him.
Standout Republican opponent, Alaskan senator Lisa Murkowski, said during a town hall last month: “We’re in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real…
“I have to figure out how to help the many and the anxious who are so afraid [in Congress]”.
Many academics from Africa in particular, who have lived through civil wars for the last 30 years, have wondered how long it would be before Americans realised they could be living through their own form of coup.
A professor at a prestigious east coast university who has a green card and is world renowned in their field said: “I’m just wary about being quoted. We [academics non-nationals] have even been told not to leave the US in case we can’t get back in. The administration is monitoring our social media accounts”.
Speaking anonymously for fear of retribution they went on: “Those of us who have grown up under authoritarian regimes have learned of the signs of incipient and growing authoritarianism. None of this is rocket science.
“There is a method: the control of the press and judiciary, co-option of the loyalty of the police and the army, rise of militias, manipulation of elections. Trump discredited the mainstream media, stacked the judiciary… He demanded the loyalty of the FBI.”
America’s judiciary has had patchy success in getting the administration to observe the constitution that the president, military and intelligence services have sworn to uphold too. Trump’s White House has ignored orders to stay deportations.
In May, more than 130 former state and federal judges demanded the government drop its charges against Milwaukee County judge Hannah Dugan, dubbing her indictment for allegedly helping a man evade immigration officials as an “egregious overreach” by the executive branch.
But Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have spread across the country arresting suspects without showing identification, frequently without warrants, and using force to impose Trump’s mass deportation promises.
This week, Trump has been concerned with the manufactured notion of an “insurrection” in California. A conflict between protestors and the armed forces on the streets of LA could be the excuse any autocrat would use to declare a national emergency, and suspend constitutional law.
“The president is trying to manufacture chaos and crisis on the ground for his own political ends,” said Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, after announcing that the state, led by Newsom, was going to sue the Trump administration for violating the constitution.
“Federalizing the California national guard is an abuse of the president’s authority under the law – and not one we take lightly. We’re asking a court to put a stop to the unlawful, unprecedented order.”
With decades of experience in west Africa and having published widely on the war that tore Yugoslavia apart, the anonymous east coast professor added a dire warning: “I think, eventually, a state will consider seceding. Maybe California. Then it will be war, I think Yugoslavia is a good model for the US”.
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