Trump’s Willing Coup Plotters By Ogaga Ifowodo Still the question: why was nearly half of the American electorate so willing to surrender their brains to Trump until he led them to vandalise their parliament in a failed coup attempt, thereby diminishing rather than making America great again? by Ogaga Ifowodo Jan 11, 2021 As the world gasps and recoils from the tragic spectacle of the storming of the Capitol, the parliament of the United States, just as Vice President Mike Pence presided over a joint sitting to certify the electoral college votes that would affirm Mr Joe Biden as the duly elected 46th president, it must wonder that the horror took so long to occur. And remember that there had been a dress rehearsal for the shameful event in the attempted kidnap and possible murder of Michigan State governor Gretchen Whitmer by the Trump-inspired Wolverine Militiamen a mere three months earlier. And that any of the rallies where Trump stoked his audiences to incendiary frenzy against his 2016 rival Hilary Clinton (“Lock her up,” he had them chant lustily), or demonised journalists and a fact-based press as “enemies of the people,” or very carefully targeted congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rasheeda Tlaib as non-Americans who should be sent back to their original shithole countries, could have exploded in bloody street brawls. Then there was his calculated cultivation and coddling of white supremacists, most notably in his claim that the neo-Nazis brandishing burning torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us” as they stomped in the streets of Charlottesville were “fine people,” just like the anti-racist activists who opposed them, one of whom was murdered. Did I mention his cold and cynical downplaying of the Coronavirus pandemic, his turning of the commonsense public health requirement of wearing a mask to prevent the spread of a deadly disease to ideological warfare even as hundreds of thousands of the citizens he swore to protect died and millions choked the hallways of hospitals?