No, impeachment is NOT "a coup"

Despite the weird assertions by his supporters that he is "the best president ever" or his own proclamations that he has accomplished more than any other president, Trump's presidency has been a shitshow since Day One. He has demonstrated complete ignorance of the process by which things get done in government. And I'm not talking about how periodically the electorate gets all worked up about Washington insiders and wants to elect an outsider to shake things up. No, I'm talking about things like not understanding that Congress is an independent branch of government, not his employees. Like being ignorant of the fact that by law regulatory changes require a process, and can't be changed by fiat. Like being so arrogant as to think that a bureaucracy of thousands can be managed by him alone without relying on career experts. 

But stupidity is not an impeachable offense.

You can't impeach a president because you don't like his policies. You can't impeach a president because he is incompetent. You can't impeach a president because he is a buffoon.

But you can impeach a president for being irredeemably corrupt.

Trump likes to throw the word "corrupt" around. The mainstream news media, which for two years he was content to label "fake", is now "corrupt". Joe Biden is corrupt. Rep. Adam Schiff is corrupt. The late Rep. Elijah Cummings was corrupt. Lately it's been the label of choice for anyone who is has the ability to actually harm him, who dares to bring out the truth. "Corrupt" Trump opposition is in a class beyond "losers", those that get the "corrupt" mud thrown at them are those who Trump is trying to smear so that the truth that they speak will be ignored.

But as many have noticed, Trump is often guilty of projection. He accuses others of what he is doing. Trump's corruption dates to well before he became president. His family engaged in fraudulent practices in order to illegally raise rents in New York and to avoid taxes. Trump himself engaged in serial fraud during his days as a casino operator. Recently documents have surfaced indicating that Trump committed either bank fraud or tax fraud - the value and occupancy of several of his buildings were reported as significantly different on his tax returns and on his loan applications.

Although all of that should have alerted the electorate that he was unfit to be president. None of that is impeachable.

The Mueller Report, while it didn't conclude that there was coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, and that the contacts between them did not rise to the level of conspiracy as legally defined, it was overwhelmingly obvious that Trump and his campaign accepted and encouraged assistance from Russia during the 2016 election. The Report did however point out numerous instances of obstruction by Trump and his campaign. Obstruction of justice - exactly what Nixon would have been impeached for if he hadn't resigned first.

Instead of being happy that he dodged the impeachment bullet that the Mueller Report could have been, Trump doubled down on his corruption and brazenly asked for the help of a foreign government in investigating a political opponent. Trump openly did the very thing that was obvious to all in 2016 but couldn't conclusively be proved, he colluded with a foreign power to influence a U.S. election. Although in this case he wasn't the passive recipient of aid initiated by another country, but the instigator of it. When his actions were revealed by a whistle-blower, he released a reconstruction of the conversation that, despite his insistence that it was a "prefect" phone call, verified virtually everything that the whistle-blower alleged. His personal lawyer, who had been bypassing the State Department in dealing with this foreign government, admitted on national television that he had been doing in person what Trump did in his phone call: soliciting foreign help in investigating a political opponent. Virtually every State Department official who has been interviewed clarifies the picture of the president using the power of his office for personal gain. If that's not an impeachable offense, I don't know what is.

And right in the middle of an impeachment inquiry, where the main issue is him putting his own needs ahead of the country's, he announces that a major international summit meeting will take place at one of his own properties!

As the inquiry proceeds headlong toward actual impeachment, Trump and his sycophants alternate between gaslighting ("the whistle-blower got it all wrong") and claiming that, yes, he made that call, and Giuliani had those meetings, but there was nothing wrong with it, because he was rooting out corruption. Throw in some deflection, projection and utter bullshit ("Schiff is corrupt", "no transparency" and "Pelosi is sick", "Deep State!" "It's a coup") and you have the panicked flailing about of a man who knows the bloodhounds are closing in.