'Be prepared': Ex-labor secretary warns Trump’s reelection bid is 'phase four of his attempted coup'

Former President Donald Trump's 2024 reelection bid is "phase four of his attempted coup," ex-United States Labor Secretary Robert Reich writes in an opinion column for The Guardian on Sunday.

The first three stages of Trump's failed efforts to subvert American democracy were, Reich writes respectively, "his refusal to concede the loss of the 2020 election," his "plot to overturn the result" of the contest that President Joe Biden won, and his ongoing campaign to "discredit and undermine the criminal justice system that is seeking to hold him accountable for phase two."

Each of those were and are "illegal," Reich says, noting that Trump is "smearing presiding judges, excoriating prosecutors and harassing and intimidating potential witnesses and jurors" and "telling another big lie: that prosecutors, grand juries, judges, potential jurors and witnesses who are prepared to try him are corrupt and partisan – engaged in a plot to prevent him from being re-elected. Like his original big lie, this one has no basis in fact."

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Trump faces ninety-one felony charges stemming from his failed 2020 gambits, the allegedly unlawful retention of classified documents at his Palm Beach, Florida Mar-a-Lago estate, and his company's suspected violations of campaign finance laws.

Reich believes that "as his trials approach in the months ahead, Trump is likely to escalate his lies that the election system and the criminal justice system are both rigged against him, and therefore, against his supporters."

Although "it is too early to know what additional illegal or unconstitutional means he will employ in phase four," Reich predicts that "Trump will treat the upcoming election any more respectfully than he treated the 2020 election or has treated efforts to hold him accountable for what he did then."

Reich adds that "since before the 2020 election," Trump "has been engaged in a concerted attempt to undermine the institutions of the US government," concluding, "everyone who cares about American democracy should be prepared for phase four."

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View Reich's editorial at this link.