The Electoral College formalized Joe Biden’s status as president-elect on Monday, but that’s not stopping Donald Trump’s base—including some Republican lawmakers. In fact, some are responding by urging an outright coup.
North Carolina state Sen. Bob Steinburg, insisting that the Supreme Court ruled against Trump’s efforts to overturn the election result because “somebody’s got something” on the justices (all of them, apparently!), called on Trump to “declare a national emergency,” “invoke the Insurrection Act,” and suspend habeas corpus. A coup, in other words, although Steinburg claims that he’s fighting an actual coup.
Virginia state Sen. Amanda Chase, who is currently running for governor, is looking for similar action, posting on Facebook that Trump should “declare martial law as recommended by General Flynn.” Also a coup.
That’s two elected Republicans at a fairly high level—we’re not talking about the proverbial dogcatcher here—calling for a coup, one of them echoing Trump’s former national security adviser, who he just pardoned of crimes. This can’t be dismissed as a fringe issue. Even if the numbers of lawmakers saying these things remains fairly low, they are elected officials. And they are echoing the comment threads on a lot more far-right websites, as well as the violent protesters who swarmed Washington, D.C., over the weekend. To say nothing of the fact that, no, Donald Trump still has not conceded, and he’s tweeting stuff like calls to arrest Republican state-level officials who refused to overturn the will of the voters and, in the context of refusing to concede, “Republican Party must finally learn to fight. People are angry!”
Trump will push it as far as he thinks he can get away with. Steinburg and Chase are telling him he can get away with a full-on coup.