Nine times in a Morning Joe segment on Tuesday [view the mash-up below], President Trump was accused, by reason of his challenges to the election results, of staging a "coup." The panel sprinkled in several mentions of "strongman," "fascist," "dictator," and "autocrat" for good measure. (These are the same people who reveled in Trump’s impeachment, yet they are concerned about a coup?)
The segment's guest was Zeynep Tufekci, born and educated in Turkey, and educated there and in the US. She is now a UNC professor. Tufekci's theory is that people in Turkey recognize coups when they see one, since they are so frequent there. In contrast, Americans, because there isn't a history of coups here, don't realize that President Trump, in challenging the election results, is attempting a coup right before their eyes.
Tufecki has expanded on her theory in an article in The Atlantic entitled: "'This Must Be Your First’—Acting as if Trump is trying to stage a coup is the best way to ensure he won’t."
She writes that coups are so common in Turkey that they have several different words for them. Shades of the multiple Inuit words for snow!
Here's some of the coup talk, in this case coming from Mika:
Let's bring in contributing writer to The Atlantic, Zeynep Tufekci from the University of North Carolina. You have written a really, really important piece in The Atlantic. It is entitled, "It must be your first," in which you're talking about acting as if Trump is trying to stage a coup is the best way to ensure that he won't. You write in part, quote, coup "may not quite capture what we're witnessing in the United States right now. But there's also a danger here. Punditry can tend to focus too much on decorum and terminology like the overachieving students so many of us once were, conflating the ridiculous with the unserious . . ." Could you talk a bit about what he's trying to do now and how it does parallel with a coup?
Scarborough and Brzezinski, predictably, were only too happy to buy into Tufekci's theory. And Scarborough put a nasty coda on the segment by accusing Republicans of being "complicit in a weak strongman's effort to subvert American democracy."
If Joe and Mika had read this article by their own network, or seen numerous other reports to the same effect, they would know that:
"President Donald Trump has confirmed he will leave the White House on January 20 if the Electoral College formally certifies President-elect Joe Biden's victory."
That sounds like the opposite of a coup. Morning Joe, you are the Walrus: Coup-Coup-C'joob!
Morning Joe repeatedly accusing President Trump of attempting a coup was sponsored in part by Sleep Number, Humira and Discover. Contact them at the Conservatives Fight Back link to let them know what you think of their sponsorship of such wild accusations.
Here's the transcript, giving context to the mashup. Click "expand" to read more.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
12/8/20
6:26 am ETMIKA BRZEZINSKI: Let's bring in contributing writer to The Atlantic, Zeynep Tufekci from the University of North Carolina. You have written a really, really important piece in The Atlantic. It is entitled, "It must be your first," in which you're talking about acting as if Trump is trying to stage a coup is the best way to ensure that he won't. You write in part, quote, coup "may not quite capture what we're witnessing in the United States right now. But there's also a danger here. Punditry can tend to focus too much on decorum and terminology like the overachieving students so many of us once were, conflating the ridiculous with the unserious . . ." Could you talk a bit about what he's trying to do now and how it does parallel with a coup?
. . .
ZEYNEP TUKCEKI: I mean, this may not be a technical coup. But maybe you could call it a constitutional coup, or a golpe, but people are using the word coup because it captures the moment in which right in front of our eyes, with the tacit approval of his political party, he is attempting to steal the election.
. . .
JOE SCARBOROUGH: This is how a strongman looks. This is how a strongman acts and I will say, I have been saying -- oh, institutions will hold. So far they have, but that said, I think she makes a great point that a lot of -- along the lines, who say we don't have the language for this. We get on here and we're shocked and we're stunned and we're deeply saddened but we keep speaking in these generalities because this has never happened before. So when we call this a coup, it doesn't quite fit. We don't quite have the language so maybe it's an auto coup.
MIKA: Yeah. Madeleine Albright writes about dictators and autocrats and how they willingly sacrifice the followers who think this dictator is somehow authentic.
SCARBOROUGH: Donald Trump is acting like a fascist, but we don't want to call him a fascist. Even though if you look up the definition of fascism, so much of what he does fits neatly in there
. . .
And of course, in this article, she's from Turkey and says we have four or five different terms for coup. Because we go through it so many times in Turkey . . . And this Republican party is complicit in a weak straw man's effort to subvert American democracy and our most critical democratic institutions.
