As coup continues, Trump's authoritarian allies continue their purges

Daily Kos Staff

Tuesday January 12, 2021 · 12:30 PM PST

2021/01/12 · 12:30

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testifies during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Feb. 28, 2020, about the Trump administration's policies on Iran, Iraq and the use of force. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) — A thug, a coward, a criminal, and now a traitor.

As Donald Trump's Republican allies continue to justify their prior demands that the presidential elections be nullified and Trump reinstalled, their allies already in government continue to retaliate against any in government who are not obsequious in their praise for Republican authoritarianism. After Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a traitor who collaborated with Trump to hide evidence of Trump's extortion of a foreign leader for personal gain long before he silently allied himself with a now-violent coup, appeared on Voice of America to give a typically puffy speech, Voice of America White House reporter Patsy Widakuswara asked questions of Pompeo as Pompeo walked out of the building's foyer.

For asking questions of Pompeo after a Pompeo appearance, Trump's treason-backing Voice of America appointees immediately removed Widakuswara from her position as White House reporter.

The good news is we have ironclad evidence of who took the action and their supposed reasoning. It was VOA director Robert Reilly, a fellow Trump loyalist installed by the rancid Bannonite Michael Pack. It follows a year of retaliation against reporters whose questions or reports displeased the malignant Republican toadies.

NPR has obtained audio of new VOA Director Reilly to VOA's WH reporter @pwidakuswara: "You obviously don't know how to behave."

He added that she was "not authorized" to be in crowded VOA foyer asking Pompeo Qs after his event at VOA's headquarters. https://t.co/BwsZ1t8Ndj
— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) January 12, 2021

The foundations of this Republican coup attempt were laid from the beginnings of Trump's "presidency," when his aides staffed government with collections of the party's most far-right fringe figures, white nationalists, hoax-promoters, authoritarians, propagandists, incompetents, and seditionists. Those figures received support from their party as they killed 400,000 Americans through incompetence, purged government of the non-ideological and the non-corrupt, and either decapitated government agencies to immobilize them or turned them into willing tools of one-party rule.

The "denazification" of government will be an all-consuming job for the next administration—or the nation will indeed fall. So long as one party believes preserving its own power and removing opposition is worth trampling over all government norms, worth pardoning any criminals whose actions assisted their party, and worth nullifying even elections themselves if the outcomes are not what they desire, a second, third or fourth coup attempt will remain a clear and present threat.

As coup continues, Trump's authoritarian allies continue their purges

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