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Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy
Comment
Paul Musgrave, Marc Ambinder, Jack Detsch, Amy Mackinnon, Robbie Gramer, Colum Lynch

This Is a Coup. Why Were Experts So Reluctant to See It Coming?

Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they storm the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6. ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images

Wednesday morning, like most mornings, I woke up to the usual round of politics news sites and newsletters: Politico Playbook, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Most of the day’s news concerned Tuesday’s runoff elections in Georgia, which apparently delivered control of the Senate to Democrats; other articles concerned the ongoing pandemic and the future of commuting in the post-pandemic world.

One article caught my eye: a Washington Post article by David Nakamura about whether the protests and petitions against the counting of Electoral College votes added up to a coup attempt. The piece quoted several liberal commentators and historians as saying that it obviously was, but the thesis was that what we were seeing as of Tuesday did “not yet meet the formal academic definition of an attempted coup.”

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