Stop Calling Impeachment a “Coup”: It Is Wrong, Dangerous, and Bad for Democracy

Congressman Chris Stewart (R-Utah)did not ask many questions on the first day of the impeachment hearings, but he did make a lot of statements. And, in one of them, he echoed what seems to have become a major talking point in the proceedings. Pointing to a sign behind him depicting a nearly three-year-old tweet by an attorney for the still-sort-of-anonymous whistle-blower, Stewart said “the coup has started.”

The Congressman is not alone in this sentiment. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy accused Democrats of plotting “a calculated coup to take down the president.” In the president himself recently tweeted that the hearings represent “a COUP intended to take away the People, their VOTE, their Freedoms, their Second Amendment, Religion, Military, Border Wall, and their God-given rights as a Citizen of The United States of America!”

It is not enough to point out that calling impeachment hearings a “coup” is inaccurate, or even that it reflects an embarrassingly poor understanding of the constitution that all three men swore to protect and defend. When the leaders of a major political party publicly and continuously label a constitutional process a coup, they collapse the distinction between law and lawlessness and increase the possibility of an actual coup — with actual violence —…