If it’s Not a Coup, Then What Would You Call It?

On his program this week, Jesse Watters of Fox News said what we’ve all been thinking: That given what we’ve learned about the extraordinary bias against Donald Trump inside the FBI, could it be that we’re in the middle of an American coup? An attempt to dethrone the rightfully-elected President of the United States using any means necessary?

Well, you would have thought that Watters was guilty of treason right there on the spot. We’ve never seen the liberal media get up on such a righteous high horse. People like CNN’s Brian Stelter called Watters “irresponsible” and “inflammatory,” and the media titans of the mainstream airwaves denounced Fox News as a place for Trump propaganda – a kind of American Pravda attempting to discredit Robert Mueller for no other reason than to cover up for Trump’s crimes.

Whatever those might be…

The always-reliable anti-Trump conservative Evan McMullin said on Twitter: “’A coup in America?’ This is incredibly irresponsible rhetoric. It’s no surprise that the same network that still denies Russian interference for Trump, also uses this kind of language to describe law enforcement efforts to uphold the law and our sovereignty.”

Former Ted Cruz campaign spokesman Ron Nehring echoed those sentiments: “Use of the word ‘coup’ by @FoxNews after Russia has deliberately worked to destabilize US democracy is extremely irresponsible and should be roundly condemned.”

The Washington Post got cute by providing a dictionary definition of the word to refute Watters and other conservative commentators who have suggested a similar premise: “Fact check: The Russia investigation is not a coup d’état, which involves the use or threat of force (usually by people inside the government) with the aim of seizing control over the national political authority.”

Okay, so it’s not that.

However…

Anyone with the brains God gave a goat can understand that Watters (who is a pundit prone to exaggeration by nature) was not literally saying that FBI forces were getting ready to overthrow the White House and install a puppet regime. He was using “coup” in a colloquial sense to show this disaster for what it is – a partisan witch hunt that is more interested in WINNING than in finding the facts.

We assume, at this point, the Washington Post will tell us that a “witch hunt” must actually involve the hunting of witches.

Call it a coup, call it a witch hunt, call it whatever you like. But what you cannot call it is a serious, non-partisan investigation, because we’ve already seen too many troubling behind-the-curtains revelations for that to fly.