The Coup Has Failed

The coup hasn't failed as long as Trump is still in office and his goons are still running things. Things aren't going as smoothly as the donvict wants but that's an entire universe of a difference from failing.
- Yeah, this article is just to distract us

Ahh yes approval ratings.
Guess what? Payments that were ordered by a Federal judge to resume haven't resumed yet.
- Nor have we dealt with the next funding lapse that will likely be used to drown employees in debt defaults. Including the ones that took the buyout.
  This is far from done.
  
  They are starving programs to death. I think the plan is to just break the law until the programs die, then they'll "resume" payments, when the institutions on the other end are dead.

Title is hopium.
The coup has not failed until the oligarchs are removed from the government.

Yeah, I'm not declaring victory yet. Celebrate the wins where we get them, but this is far from over. We have successfully thrown some sand in the gears, but there is still a lot of damage that can be done. This coup is ongoing, popular support be damned. He's not going to stop trying as long as he's in office.
- Exactly. And since he ignored the courts and there has been no retribution for doing so as of yet, I'd say he's succeeding.

That article was all over the place, largely underestimates the moment, and completely misunderstands the purpose of the laughably weak Republican pushback, but the last paragraph at least tries to clean it up.
This is also not a call to stand down, to relax, to be less vigilant. It’s merely an observation: Public outcry has succeeded. It’s made it impossible for Trump to sustain his coup. If the people keep this up, they will succeed even more.
I’d also moderate his language significantly. Public outcry has absolutely not succeeded, but it has helped give some ammunition to elected officials and confidence to civil servants, so it’s true that we will absolutely fail without sustained public outcry. But we are still light years away from succeeding.

It hasn't failed...
You could make the argument that it is failing because they have gotten everything in a month, but if someone was seriously saying that, it would be dangerously optimistic.
We can say they failed when they no longer have complete control of the federal government.

Are the compromised people in power in prison? If not these snakes won't stop until they ruin this country all for a buck.

But the real question about Trump’s second term was always whether he would bully the country into an effective monarchy, or fall prey to the laws of political gravity.
I’m taking a pundit risk by saying that we now have that answer, after one month in office: Trump’s cooked.
Definitely a pundit hot take. The HUD Musk feet video tells me that all is not lost, but I find it hard to declare that Trump has succeeded or failed at this moment. The last bastion of resistance is from the workers themselves. Opinion polls are going to opinion poll, but the three ultimate questions are: How many sycophants can Trump find? How many of them are even halfway-competent at their job? How much of the public are going to submit to false authority?
The most optimistic take I can glean from the opinion numbers, is that it might be an indication that the answer is getting smaller for the third question.

<Fry-not-sure-meme>
Not sure if this is liberal hopium or right wing/foreign influence propaganda. It's supposed to be a liberal publication so the first I guess? But it seems more like the latter.
my interpretation of article: "Trump's approval rating has gone down by a few points. Based on this we will now leap to the wild conclusion that 'the coup has failed, everything is fine now', to placate you, dull your mind, and distract you from noticing that the coup has in fact not failed and is moving along at a high speed. So isn't it wonderful that the coup has failed? No need to go to any town hall meetings or demonstrations after all. OK run along now, back to work!"

False!

I think he overstates his premise, but he hits on some interesting points.
The thing about populism is you have to be popular. The moment you lose touch with the public mood, you lose the ability to set your agenda without friction.
We should absolutely be paying attention to public sentiment. Yeah, yeah, term limited, no more elections, etc. Regardless of your opinion about elections in 2026, Republicans are definitely thinking about them, and right now I'd say many are wary. Republicans have hitched their wagons to Trump (not Musk, not Vance), and now their electoral fate is tied inexorably to him.
Trump's going to keep the MAGA core, but he's starting to shed independents and moderates on the economy and the question of if the country is heading in the wrong direction, and he's doing it in a way that's impossible to ignore, unlike his supposed approval rating decline, which is still within the margin of error. The more unpopular he becomes, the more some legislators will want to distance themselves from his more extreme impulses, particularly in the Senate. Their margin is still relatively tight in both chambers.
Last time you saw defections and retirements. Others clung even more closely to Trump. But Trump isn't running again, and the man is nearly 80. Musk is unpopular and barred from running, and Vance will never fill that gap (and also, I think Vance is the most popular he'll ever be right now at around 40%).
The biggest example of the change in mood in the country may be happening at Paramount (which owns CBS). It looked almost certain a month ago that the studio would follow what Disney, Facebook, and X have done by settling frivolous lawsuits with Trump. [...] But that settlement appears far away now, and Paramount has fought back, including by pursuing a trial where it could obtain Trump’s personal financial information in discovery.
I don't think this is any grand show of courage on the part of Paramount (they missed that boat), but it is worth remarking on how their stance has changed so dramatically.
Anyway, this could still go either way, but my main point is it's winnable. If we keep the pressure on, we can stop the coup and limit the havoc they'll be able to wreak.

It has "failed" insomuch as the first one did: with zero accountability. They're restoring their last checkpoint now and they won't make the same mistakes twice.