‘Morning Joe’ Guest: If There’s a Coup Going On, It’s What Trump Is Doing

Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, hit back at claims that impeaching President Donald Trump is a coup d’état. Speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday, Haas compared the Trump administration to Latin American dictatorships.

“[T]he President and [GOP Rep.] Peter King and others are describing impeachment as a coup,” Haas said.

“If there’s a coup going on, it’s not the impeachment process. That is what the Constitution lays out,” he said.

“It is essentially what the President and some of those around him are doing by undermining the normal procedures of government, by not allowing Congress to play its legitimate constitutional role by attacking the deep state, by going after the Independence of the media, by not allowing people to testify.”

“That is what is undermining the political system. In Latin America, interestingly enough, there’s a phrase called autogolpe –  self-coups. It’s when governments fear people and the normal assemblies and legislatures moving against them, and they essentially cut them off, and they stop the normal political process.”

“What we are seeing here in the United States is an attempt to stop the legitimate processes of government, to undermine the legitimate organs of government in order to protect the President.”

“This is dangerous, and what you’re getting at, is also, this is sowing the seeds of violence. If you delegitimize government, if you delegitimize what is normal, then you’re creating a space for something else, and the something else is either extra constitutional political activity or even worse, in some ways, violence. That is what we’beginning to see here.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.