If I were trying to overthrow a duly elected president, I'd start by saying he conspired with a foreign power to cheat in the election. I'd believe I could get away with this charge because I would have the media on my side, relentlessly pounding away at the narrative. It would help that members of the president's own party, despising him for destroying their cozy little arrangement with the opposition, refused to support him politically.
When it became apparent that the president was hugely effective at governing on those things that matter to ordinary people, such as the economy, national security, immigration, energy policy, etc., and that the false charges of treason and cheating weren't sticking, I'd look ahead to throwing the next election.
What I would need is a way to prevent the president from campaigning and a way to institutionalize election fraud. Thankfully, I would have
gamed out long before the election what a government can do if faced with a pandemic infection. COVID's appearance was providential.
Image of handcuffed man (edited) by Racool_studio.
Please note before I continue that we knew by March exactly how bad COVID was and what the best approach was: the
Diamond Princess, a cruise ship moored off Japan, was
a perfect Petri dish. It revealed that the elderly and immune-compromised were at risk; everyone else was fine. The way to address the problem was to protect that small group and get on with life.
With help from that same compliant media establishment and fellow travelers in the social media and tech world, along with an administrative state that despised the president, I would quickly turn that flu into the newest incarnation of the Black Death. Once the people panicked, I would lock down the country while insisting that there was no viable treatment. This provided three benefits:
- it would destroy the thriving economy on which the president would run;
- it would prevent the president, a crowd-pleaser, from campaigning before crowds; and
- it would allow legislatures and secretaries of state across America to implement often unconstitutional, and always unreasonable, voting rules, such as months-long early voting, ballot-harvesting, and voting only by mail-in ballot. Add to this the ongoing refusal to check identification, and the election was in the bag before it started.