In a furious appearance on MSNBC in which he spoke to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Congressman Jamie Raskin went berserk about President Donald Trump’s agenda, particularly his allowing Elon Musk to take a massive wrecking ball to the federal budget as the Department of Government Efficiency tries to trim the fat, declaring that what is going on is a “coup.”
Particularly, Raskin seemed to take issue with Elon Muk’s decision to take over the Treasury payments system, through which he can expose the large-scale fraud and incompetence he alleges is occurring within the government’s payment system, and shut off the flows of funds to those who shouldn’t be receiving them. Enemies of Musk and Trump have called that a “coup.”
That came when Maddow asked him about the civil service. She asked, “When you’re talking about civil service law and lawsuits to try to protect civil servants being one of the fronts on which the opposition can proceed. What are you seeing as the other potential fronts on which the opposition can advance in very short notice?”
Raskin responded by immediately threatening to take the fight against Trump to the streets with “popular protest,” a clear reference to the violent chaos of 2020. He said, “Well, in Congress, of course, we’re going to be fighting them in subcommittees and committees on the floor, in the house, in the Senate, with filibusters at every turn, but popular protest is going to become very important here, and it’s going to look very different from the first Trump administration.”
Continuing, and referencing another large scall protest against Trump before ranting abou the J6 pardons, he said, “Everybody remembers, you know, a million people gathering for the Women’s March, and I have no doubt we could get at least that many, if not 5 million. But we also know that Donald Trump has just pardoned 1500 proud boys, Oath Keepers, violent insurrectionists, cop assaulters, and so we don’t want a huge protest like that to become a magnet for right-wing provocateurs and violence.”
He then absurdly claimed that Trump wants to “declare martial law” and would use provocateurs to do so, saying, “Donald Trump would love nothing more than to send in the police and to, you know, stage some kind of, you know, declare martial law or something in a situation like that.”
Still not done, Raskin called for “decentralized local protests” against Trump’s agenda in the streets of small towns, saying, “But I think the decentralized local protests around particular departments, particular agencies in particular towns and cities are going to proliferate. And I got to tell you, it was thrilling and exhilarating to see hundreds of people show up on just a couple hours notice that we were going to have a press conference outside of [USAID] today.”
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He concluded by alleging the coup is occurring, saying, “So there’s tremendous popular fervor here, and that’s giving everybody a lot of confidence and showing that we’re not afraid of these people. They might be attempting a coup against America, but we’re going to stop them, and we’re going to use every means available to us.”
Watch him here:
Slamming Raskin for his rhetoric, the “Western Lensman” X account said, “Do it. This incendiary rhetoric and radical left street protests are American voter repellant. They’ve learned nothing. The idea that a duly-elected President is undertaking a “coup” against his own government by enacting reforms demanded by the voters that elected him is next-level fear-mongering idiocy.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video