January 6th & Project 2025... two strategies, one objective... COUP
TAT readers,
Welcome back to this week’s first essay about our most severe, national security threats. Today we will tackle why today’s, MAGA controlled GOP has definitively demonstrated why, we should believe them when they say they want to overturn our constitutional republic. Quite frankly, should MAGA win in November, it is not just our republic that is at risk, but considering our role as a primary democratic world leader, all democracy is at increased threat.
I raise this specific issue because it seems to me and based on both professional experience and research, that the GOP is effective in propaganda-based warfare and today’s Democratic Party is largely incompetent at marketing a clear narrative of either threats, their beliefs, policy or otherwise. MAGA is selling fascism in support of oligarchy and underpinned by an extremist ideology, called, White Christian Nationalism. The intentions of MAGA are exclusively unconstitutional, while that the left keeps their agenda between our constitutional guardrails and moves our nation towards its best version of our founders’ intentions. Whether you agree with the left policies or not, they are the only major party that in the Trump era, will protect our republic as intended by our founders.
In today’s essay, I hope to help us see just how campaigning incompetence is putting our republic at risk from MAGA’s next coup attempt. Between the Democratic Party’s lack of skill at narrating this specific threat, and the fact that our national security community is grotesquely incompetent at protecting our nation’s citizens from mis and disinformation, there is extreme risk to our republic. To be perfectly clear, I am not fearmongering here. I am simply narrating the threat in a way that I hope makes the severity of the threat to a MAGA win, easier to see and understand. The MAGA trainwreck is without a doubt, a long-evolving trainwreck for American democracy.
There’s a great deal to get to, so… let’s get started.
As with Maya Angelou’s iconic quote, today’s MAGA GOP has already, “shown us who they are.” The evidence to support this claim:
We must address the global threat of Far-Right, Extremism (truthaboutthreats.com)
They are willing to use force among other illegal means to coerce others to bow to their will.
Despite an entire administration of Trump and GOP cronies, enabling GOP controlled state and local legislators to shove their culture war, far-right ideology down the throats of all citizens, they lost the 2020 election and turned to the violence, a horrified nation witnessed first-hand on January 6th, 2021.
January 6th was an armed insurrection that had been planned for months at the direction of the White House and a select number of high-profile thugs, like Mike Flynn and Roger Stone. Flynn, the operational commander and White Christian Nationalist leader and operational commander of the armed insurrection. The attack plan included the use of “troops,” cached weapons and strategized the assault on the Capital in which law enforcement, was brutally attacked.
The evidence is overwhelming in respect to my claims about J6 and most of it can be found on the Department of Justice page, devoted to informing the public of the status of all cases and their outcome.
Of note, The Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes, along with others were charged with Seditious Conspiracy. Both Tarrio and Stewart are serving the longest sentences post-conviction with terms of 22 and 18 years respectively, in Federal Prison.
The point of these facts is that we now can be confident of the willingness and high likelihood that the MAGA hordes, are capable of once again pursuing their agenda, via violence. The violence includes a massive threat of violence against poll workers and election officials.
True to form for MAGA, election officials of color, are at more risk than their white counterparts.
The truth is, far-right violence has increased dramatically in the past decade or so, and as the graphic from CSIS/ Center for Strategic and International Studies clearly demonstrates. Today’s MAGA is the outgrowth of this decades long conditioning, that allows for right-wing audiences to accept political violence as acceptable, more than the left, by no small margin.
To wrap up this portion of today’s essay, it is important to take a couple of sentences to summarize. Also, for full transparency to newer readers who may not be aware, CT or Counterterrorism was my mission while still actively in the military and for the US Special Operations Command. I retired in 2015 but still advise or contribute to violent extremist work and research, among other related threat issues. Whether deployed in combat zones or working on CVE, countering violent extremist programs when not deployed, understanding violent extremism is deep in my wheelhouse. This is especially true when it comes to understanding the cognitive dynamics of radicalization, conditioning of audiences to accept violent behavior and the results of such efforts when they fail or are not addressed assertively.
The domestic threatscape regarding terrorism and violent extremism is thoroughly hobbled by GOP members of congress and at red state leadership levels. The MAGA movement is by definition, a violent extremist movement due to events like January 6th and the steadily increasing number of violent, far-right domestic crimes, often against non-Christians and people of color. Other forms of domestic extremist violence cumulatively, including the left, is roughly equivalent to the far-right.
In a GOP controlled by MAGA, it is very difficult to separate the GOP itself from MAGA and their ideology. Their 2024 GOP Platform and the now infamous Project 2025 are extremist in content and in their strategies to convert our republic into a fascist dictatorship with all power in the Executive branch, supported by a handful of preeminent oligarchs and underpinned by White Christian Nationalism.
The case that I have made until this point in the essay, is that today’s GOP is conditioned to accept and, in many cases, defend the use of violence to support their coup. Not only will they condone it, but large numbers will participate… again and ever more violently. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI Director and the Department of Homeland Security have long warned of this in publicly available reporting. Of course they do not point a finger at the GOP proper, but their classification of far-right threats is in my opinion, synonymous with the GOP voters, who still mark ballots for Republicans. For the record, today’s GOP may be Republicans, but they are most certainly… conservatives.
So, with the facts established regarding the propensity for more violence by MAGA to achieve their coup, it is important to note that the 2024 GOP Platform, largely molded in sync with Project 2025’s right-wing extremist strategy, is the roadmap for remaking the nation should they win. This strategy, accompanied by political violence, a track-record of following through on the agenda items and open embrace of Putin, makes today’s GOP itself, an acute threat.
A quick note regarding Trump’s so-called rejection of Project 2025, it is just another conspiracy theory, in the herd of conspiracy theories, underpinning the party itself. More than a dozen of Trump’s senior administration officials wrote the chapters and JD Vance wrote the forward. Trump hobnobbed with the leader of the project and the head of the disgraced, Heritage Foundation.
Well, if we were to inventory what MAGA has at their disposal to achieve their coup, it would look something like the following.
A wholly corrupt leader with a pathological desire to emulate organized crime “Dons” or other fascist leaders who can demand subservience from their “serfs.” Remember, Project 2025 puts all of the nation’s authority into the Executive Branch, obliterating our entire constitutional republic’s adherence to “checks and balances.”
A band of US and global oligarchs that would make up the core element of running our nation and who enable their fascist leader with nearly limitless funding. They expect to be repaid by becoming influential oligarchs in the new government. By the way, this style of government is a near twin to Putin’s Russian government
A national ideology of White Christian Nationalism.
A history of wielding violence, intimidation, coercion and economic leverage, over their non-compliant victims within the opposition.
A history of using the Justice Department to achieve their agendas.
A MAGA movement that has for years threatened civil war and violent uprisings.
This is just the short list and if it gives you concern… it should.
The bottom-line to all of this, is a potentially dynamic and dangerous climax to our election cycle. Again, I am not attempting to fearmonger here. I just want to offer my analysis of this most serious threat to our republic. As mentioned earlier, MAGA is part of a worldwide trend of far-right extremism, mostly centered on Putin’s Russia. Yes, as volume 5 of the SSCI/ Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Russian report shows in agonizing detail, Trump’s 2016 campaign worked closely with Russian intelligence to swing the election to Trump. Putin has owned Trump for a very long time and the evidence of Trump’s MAGA GOP kowtowing to Putin from 2016 on, is well-documented. The Republican House of Representatives, led by Speaker Mike Johnson, simply refused to fund Ukraine aid, due to this Putin subservience.
If this has helped in any way, to help you see this threat more clearly, then I will count this a success. As for me, I am not a political party person, preferring to see them as George Washington, a personal hero of mine did, as threats to our republic. We will take on the topic of party or as Washington’s era called them, “factions,” another time. Until November 5th, our biggest concern in the threat department, is preventing a coup by MAGA. Even the attempt of such would dramatically impact our nation at home, and abroad. Business, commerce, national security issues at home and in conjunction with allies such as NATO, would suffer.
Concurrently, our adversaries will prosper. With China now at the hierarchical head of the new Axis of Evil, followed by Russia, Iran and N. Korea, we cannot afford to be diminished as a superpower, in any way. The real suffering though will be our children’s and grandchildren, should they live under tyrannical rule, much akin to serfdom.
As with the Maya Angelou quote at the very beginning; today’s MAGA GOP has very clearly, “shown us who they are.” I would suggest to all of you that embrace our true national values… to believe them and vote accordingly.
My very best for the rest of your week,
Paul