Trump Camp: Trump’s Coup Isn’t The Problem, It’s The Fact Biden Keeps Talking About It

MILWAUKEE — A top Donald Trump campaign adviser on Tuesday complained that President Joe Biden’s repeated criticism of Trump as a “threat to democracy” because of his coup attempt was an incitement to violence.

“They call him ‘Hitler,’ say he has a war on democracy,” Chris LaCivita, who along with Susie Wiles manages Trump’s effort to regain the White House, said at an event tied to this week’s Republican National Convention. “This has been the central premise of their campaign.”

Since Trump’s attempted assassination at a rally Saturday, his allies have tried to blame it on those who have described his actions leading up to and his subsequent defense of his Jan. 6, 2021, attempt to overturn the election he lost. LaCivita said constantly calling Trump a danger to democracy could trigger violence. “There’s a lot of sick people out there making a lot of dumb decisions,” he said.

LaCivita went on to label efforts by some Democrats to pressure Biden to abandon his reelection campaign because of concerns about his age as a “coup.”

“They’re trying to fight off a coup right now,” he said. “If the coup works … and he’s functionally incapable of running for president, then he’s functionally incapable of being president.”

LaCivita did not take questions from the media following his remarks at an event sponsored by Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service in a restaurant about a mile from the convention arena. He did not respond to HuffPost queries later about his view of Jan. 6 and Trump’s role in it.

It’s unclear when, if ever, Biden has compared Trump to Adolf Hitler, although he has pointed out to audiences that Trump’s claim that migrants who enter the country illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country” is a slur that was used by Nazis. (Trump’s newly chosen running mate, Ohio GOP Sen. JD Vance, however, did call Trump “America’s Hitler” during Trump’s first run for president in 2016.)

Further, attempting to persuade a candidate to drop out of a race is not remotely a coup — while using the threat of violence and then actual violence to effect a change in government, as Trump tried to do, is the definition of a coup or, in Trump’s instance, a self-coup.

LaCivita is a well-respected Republican political consultant probably best known for engineering the infamous “Swift Boat” ads disparaging 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry’s service in the Vietnam War. His and Wiles’ quiet, competent stewardship of Trump’s campaign stands in marked contrast to the one led by Corey Lewandowski, then Paul Manafort, and finally Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway in 2016, and the one essentially run by son-in-law Jared Kushner in 2020.

LaCivita said Tuesday that the Trump campaign does not care if Democrats do decide not to proceed with Biden as their 2024 nominee and instead go with Vice President Kamala Harris. “We’re prepared for whatever,” he said. “If it happened, the national press will do their best to hand Kamala a reset button, but we won’t allow that.”

Republicans on the first day of the Republican National Convention Monday made history by becoming the first major party to nominate a convicted criminal for president. Trump in May was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records for his $130,000 hush money payment to a porn actor in the days before the 2016 election. He is scheduled to be sentenced on those charges in September.

He faces 54 other felony charges across three other indictments, two based on his coup attempt, in federal and Georgia state courts. One indictment with 40 counts, a federal prosecution based on his refusal to turn over secret documents he took with him to his South Florida country club upon leaving the White House, was dismissed by the trial judge but could be reinstated by the appeals court.

He nevertheless holds a slight lead over Biden in most polls and will be able to end the federal prosecutions against himself should he win in November and at the very least put the state cases on hold for the duration of his presidency.