How to stop a coup/Trump lies about Philadelphia because it's a city that could decide the election
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Welcome everyone to The Run Up, a brand new podcast from The Real News Network that's going to help you stay informed, engaged, and empowered this election season. My name is Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor-in-chief at The Real News, and I'm excited to bring you the newest installment of The Run Up. We've got a two-parter for y'all today.

In the first segment, our own Jessel Knorr talks with writer and sociologist George Lakey about Donald Trump's repeated suggestions that he would not leave office if he's voted out in November and what people can do to fight back.

Then in the second segment, Jessel speaks with Akayla Lacey of The Intercept and elected judge of elections Bob Lacey about Trump's spurious claims of voter fraud in Philadelphia and what impact that could have on voters and poll workers in the Democratic stronghold. Let's go. This will be the most corrupt election in the history of our country. I'm Jessel Knorr for The Real News Network.

Are the American people prepared to stop a coup? If I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can't go along with that. And I'll tell you what, from a common sense... Does that mean you're gonna tell your people to take to the street? It means you have a fraudulent election. You're sending out 80 million ballots. And what would you do about that? They're not equipped to... These people aren't equipped to handle it, number one. Number two, they cheat.

It's becoming increasingly clear that Donald Trump may not accept the results of the presidential election if he loses. -You commit here today for a peaceful,

-Transferral of power after the election. -Well, we're gonna have to see what happens. You know that I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster. Get rid of the ballots, and you'll have a very -- we'll have a very peaceful -- There won't be a transfer, frankly. There'll be a continuation. -Well, our next guest argues that a well-organized people can stop a November coup, and they have done it many times before.

Worth mentioning, often in countries where the U.S. government is the one behind those coups. Now joining us to discuss this is George Lakey. His most recent book, How We Win, is a guide to nonviolent direct action campaigning. He's a columnist for wagingonviolence.org, which recently published the viral piece, 10 Things You Need to Know to Stop a Coup by Daniel Hunter. Daniel couldn't join us for this discussion, but recommended we get George in his place. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for inviting me. So we're in these unprecedented times for the United States, but we are facing a scenario that has played out in dozens of countries around the world. So there are lessons that we can learn from other struggles and from movements within this country that have taken place historically.

You know, we've all read this, a lot of us have read this great piece by Daniel in Waging Nonviolence. Can you take us through some of what, you know, the nonviolent movement around the world has learned when facing these situations?

Actually, we have an advantage over a number of the places where there's been research done on how those coup attempts were defeated. We had the advantage of already having so many people in motion, thanks to Black Lives Matters and the climate crisis and other issues, the incarceration, mass incarceration. There have been a whole series of issues that have gotten Americans moving.

So it's not a situation where sluggish body politic, you know, that has to be awakened. We're very much an awakened population. And so I think we have an advantage over some of the countries that have needed to get themselves ready to take on a coup and have successfully defeated it.

So one of the things that Donald Trump has done, and it's emerging as a central part of his campaign, is claiming without evidence that Democrats are rigging the election against him. He's claimed mail-in voter fraud will cost him a victory.

What's going on? Take a look at West Virginia. Mailmen selling the ballots. They're being sold. They're being dumped in rivers. This is a horrible thing for our country. There is no... This is not... There is no evidence of that. This is not going to end well. So, Trump's FBI director recently told Congress there's no evidence of mass voter fraud.

But that hasn't stopped Trump from developing, quote, contingency plans to bypass the election results and appoint local electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. That's according to a piece published last week by Barton Gellman in The Atlantic that asks, if the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him?

You know, that is the question this article ultimately asks. Talk about how people can mobilize and organize to prepare for what increasingly seems as the inevitable path this country is headed. A political scientist named Stephen Zunas did a careful research job with 12 coup attempts, eight of which were defeated by the people.

In order to find out in those efforts that were successful in defeating the coup, what worked. And he came up with four ingredients for a successful defeat of a coup. Number one was widespread participation. It doesn't work if only a small part of the population erupts, right? It needs to be a large one.

The second was alliance building, and especially alliance building toward the center. That is, if it's only the radicals or the extreme progressives who act, it's not likely to work. However, if there are alliances with the center, the center can actually make the difference in defeating a coup. And then the third ingredient that he found very important was that

there be a discipline of non-violence, that is, even though there's bound to be a certain amount of acting out by people who believe in using violence as a protest, if the preponderance of the movement is non-violent, that seems to make a difference. And then finally, if the people who are initiators

don't support negotiation with the coup plotters, but instead flat out refuse to accept the orders of or go along with the illegitimate authority, in this case it's presumably Trump, if they flat out refuse, that seems to make a difference as well.

And so you've got those four ingredients. All of those we're capable of doing. I'm happy to announce, partly because we have some momentum going already, and also because in those coups that Stephen found, those eight out of 12 that were successfully defeated...

the people didn't have a previous warning. The plotters had been behind the scenes and then suddenly, boom, they had a section of the military on their side, whatever they had, and they moved in order to establish a coup. And nevertheless, eight out of 12 times, the people were able successfully and nonviolently to throw out the coup plotters. Now, in our case, it's thanks to...

We have a very reckless president. Thanks to his blabbing all the time. Yeah.

refusing to honor the results of the election or chooses, you know, holds that possibility open. That means that we have all this opportunity to prepare so we can train, we can set up deterrence procedures that make it more likely actually that the wiser heads around him will say, look, you're going to, you're going to go down to defeat. That's really embarrassing. Let's just accept the results of the election.

And one of the key things that everyone should know is that we are almost certainly not going to get election results the night of the election. And those results may show Trump up, you know, as because Democrats are expected to vote in higher numbers and through mail-in votes, absentee ballots, which Trump does himself, but has railed against.

as fraudulent without any evidence, as we know. So this can carry out for days or weeks. And then the importance of calling it a coup, the importance of the language. Can you talk about that as well?

Yes. The advantage of that is that it shows the urgency of it. If we just say, well, he's fiddling with things, people often can feel, well, that's for the politicians to worry about and the courts to worry about how things get fiddled.

If, on the other hand, we say, no, no, no, this is an actual power grab. This is actually a coup attempt that's underway. And we have to act like other peoples have in other countries who've defeated coups. In other words, we have to confront it on a mass basis. So, George, what are some resources people can use and access to help them organize and be prepared in the weeks ahead? It would be excellent if we could deter coups.

Donald Trump from even trying this. And one means of doing that that has actually worked in the past

with regard to a president who was tempted to do a reckless thing, is to get masses of people to sign a pledge saying that they won't go along with an abridgment of our rights, of our voting rights, that we are going to insist that every vote be counted. So we've created on the website, choosedemocracy.us, that's choosedemocracy.us, we've created a pledge that many thousands of people are now signing,

And the idea of that is that we can show in advance that so many people are united. That actually stopped Ronald Reagan from invading from Honduras where he'd stationed U.S. troops, invading Nicaragua at an awkward moment in the 80s. We need to deter him if possible. But the other advantage of that website is that it offers evidence-based information

and that's an underlined evidence base, it offers those resources that enable people to find out the concrete things that they can do as an attempted coup may unfold. And also it announces trainings. There are thousands of people already enrolling for trainings because it's in a way, it's like a nonviolent army we're developing here. We will do better if we train to meet whatever comes.

All right, George Lakey, thank you so much for joining us. A columnist for Waging Nonviolence, which recently published the viral piece, 10 Things You Need to Know to Stop a Coup. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. And thank you for joining us at The Real News Network. Keep following all of our election coverage at The Real News on Twitter and Facebook. And you can follow me at Jessal Noor. That's at J-A-I-S-A-L-N-O-R.

All right, there's the haps. To Dylan Falaju, co-host of The Real News Show, why you should give a fuck? We here at The Real News are in the middle of our fundraiser and we need your help to keep the lights on and conversations like this one going. So for more information or to donate, head to therealnews.com slash donate. We thank you in advance. Don't know why I did that. This will be the most corrupt election in the history of our country. Welcome to The Real News. I'm Jussel Knorr.

While the president battles COVID-19, Donald Trump and his allies continue to attack mail-in voting, which many states have adopted to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. During the first presidential debate, Donald Trump continued to promote lies about voter fraud, attacking the integrity of the election, and it seemed encouraging voter intimidation in the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia, which could determine who wins the election and where early voting is already underway.

In Philadelphia, they went in to watch. They were called poll watchers, a very safe, very nice thing. They were thrown out. They weren't allowed to watch. You know why? Because bad things happen in Philadelphia, bad things. And I am urging my people, I hope it's going to be a fair election. If it's a fair election... Republicans are more likely to vote in person and Democrats more likely to vote by mail, which adds to the drama that could play out once polls close on November 3rd.

Trump could be ahead the night of the election and claim the election was being stolen from him as mail-in votes are counted.

Well, now joining us to discuss this are two guests. Akayla Lacy is covering the 2020 election for The Intercept. Her latest piece is Trump Campaign Looks to Make Good on Poll-Watching Threat in Philadelphia. And Bob Stewart is an elected judge of elections and serves on the executive board of Philadelphia's 58th Democratic Ward. He's a former journalist who's covered courts, government, and politics. Thank you both for joining us. My pleasure. Thanks for having us.

So we know that, you know, under a lot of different scenarios, Pennsylvania and specifically Philly could help determine who the next president is. Kayla, you've been on the ground during early voting and in the last debate. Trump, you know, Trump obviously, you know,

said countless lies and mistruths. And he talked about, as we heard in the introduction, about some of his supporters being kicked out of early voting locations. Can you talk about what happened and why this is so significant, what he's alleging?

-Yeah, so the president during the debate and earlier in the day on Tuesday tweeted that some of his campaign poll watchers had been kicked out of early voting sites in Philadelphia. Some people were barred from entry, but what actually happened is that the campaign did not have any registered poll watchers in the city, as the Inquirer reported, and sent people basically to try to illegally enter

early voting centers, which the city is saying are not technically polling sites, so you're not allowed to have poll watchers or any sort of register -- Even if they were registered, they wouldn't be allowed to go into these centers to observe voting. One woman tried to go into a center in Overbrook and told an "Inquirer" reporter that she was kicked out. Trump appeared to refer to that person later during the debate. And then one of his campaign officials actually was kicked out of another center

It was said that he was being boisterous and was trying to film people voting. He appeared at the Philly commissioners meeting the next morning to request formally that the city allow the campaign to appoint poll watchers at these early voting centers, which the city said, again, they're not polling sites, indicating that that would not be allowed to happen.

And Bob, so you have been covering elections and are involved in elections in Philadelphia for a long time. Talk about the significance of Trump's comments and what's been unfolding on the ground. I think something that makes this a bad situation is you're causing confusion with voters. You're causing confusion with people who don't vote in Philadelphia, thinking that something's going on.

What makes me really nervous is there's 1,700 divisions in Philadelphia about that. And I'm just a person working there. I'm not a security person or anything. If someone comes into these locations accusing us of doing something or thinking something's wrong, it could turn into a problem with control. And that could actually intimidate voters from coming in. I mean, we have people who

They just don't want to be a part of all the ruckus. And that to me is intimidating voting. So we have to be, you know, you have to be careful about what you say and how you say it, especially when you're a person of power and influence. And I don't think there's anything to really worry about there. There is already poll watchers, a situation for the actual election day.

You're going to come in. If you want somebody at that place, you can have somebody at that place and they can observe, but they can't interact with voters. They can't disrupt the process. But that system's already set up. What's going on now, it's not a polling place. It's a place, it's basically like a glorified mailbox. You fill out your ballot and then you're just bringing it there, taking out the postage and the delivery and the time delay. You're just delivering it directly to the office, which was allowed way before this. This was

you could always bring it down to the election office. When the law was originally come up in 2019, Act 77, you could always have brought it down to the office. And that wasn't considered a polling place. And no one said anything then. No one said, hey, we should be able to have someone there. Now that they expanded the satellites to make it easier for people to get to the election office, why should that change? So I just worry about what could happen on election day. People may be mistakenly thinking something's going on and really nothing's going on.

And Akayla, can you talk a little bit about the significance of Pennsylvania specifically and Philadelphia, something like one in five registered Democrats in Pennsylvania or in Philly? So the role that could play, especially on determining who wins this election.

Yeah, so Hillary Clinton lost Pennsylvania by something like 44,000 votes in 2016. That's far fewer people than live in the city of Philadelphia, which, as you mentioned, is a concentration of the state's Democratic population. So people are not really concerned that Philly is going to go for Trump. They're more concerned that what's going to happen in 2016 is going to happen again, which is that many people just did not vote

And that correlated with the blacker wards in the district or in the county, sorry, that did not end up voting for Trump, but didn't come out and vote and may have voted for Obama in 2016 or in 2008. So, I mean, a lot of people are excited and were out on Tuesday, you know, at City Hall. People, my family, everyone has been trying to get their ballots in early. But, yeah.

There is a large portion of the population that still, you know, doesn't really, does not intend to vote. And so it's kind of a toss up as far as, that's really what the concern is. It's not so much like, oh, is this, are Republicans going to flip people in Philadelphia? It's more, are they going to sow confusion, as Bob mentioned? And are people, is that going to add to the number of people who don't end up voting for some reason on, before election day? Yeah.

And Bob, we've seen a number of lawsuits in the state of Pennsylvania, especially from Republicans trying to challenge some of these voting rules. And we know that one of the lawsuits might get, is being appealed to the Supreme Court. So we don't know what the final, I was reading on CNN, we don't know yet what the final voting rules may be. Trump said very bad things happened in Philadelphia. What is he talking about?

I mean, I think it's just a perception. You know, it's just one of those things where you say that and people are like, oh, yeah, okay. I mean, hey, it's a really popular T-shirt in Philadelphia right now. You know, Philadelphia didn't really – they weren't offended by it. But good things happen in Philadelphia, let's be honest. And I think that's still happening. Again, it goes back to just –

The lawsuits are another thing where it's causing confusion. I walk around my neighborhood as a committee person in my neighborhood and I go, I knock on doors, I leave the letter if I don't hear anybody. And this year, it was a lot more leaving the letters because I knew some of my elderly constituents here didn't want to answer the door and I understand. So I left the letter. I took phone calls today. People are just, they don't know what they're supposed to do. So I'm just telling them, listen,

Do it real simple. Follow those rules and that thing. Take it over to the local place, which is the local high school near here. Deliver it to the office. If you need a ride, give me a call. Most people have a son or daughter who can take them over. But I think it's that confusion that just people are like, man, there's so much going on with Supreme Court and Democrats and Republicans fighting. And then you have this person in the neighborhood. I mean, what are they supposed to think? What are they supposed to do? Yeah.

And so even at the mail-in vote, which should have been fairly easy, is now confused. And no one really knows if your ballot gets there late, is it going to get counted? They don't really know now. If you make a mistake on how you fill out your ballot, is it going to count? They don't really know now. So now you've got people who already applied for the ballots. They got their ballot. They're getting it this week, and they really don't know if they should use that ballot.

And then when you come into an election booth, I stay on top of all these rules, really well-versed to the latest rule to the day before I file a lawsuit at nine in the morning on election day.

What I worry about is the 1,700 other places. If there's 200 people like me, I'd be surprised as judge of elections. So you have 1,500 people who aren't going to really know the latest rules, who aren't going to know, hey, when you come in with a filled-in mail-in ballot, you want to cancel it. Are you allowed to go in the machine? Or do you have to fill out a provisional ballot? And all this stuff, it causes lines at the election booth. It causes problems. It causes people getting angry. Even when you have everything in order, people get angry and upset because they think,

something's going on or something's going on. We had it in June 2nd was crazy because we were all in different voting locations. They had to consolidate a lot because of a lot of our poll workers out. Again, more confusion. You're not in the right place. They took one division out of the place where we were. We were in the different place. I mean, I couldn't tell you

How many people I stood out there with my iPhone and went on philadelphievotes.com to punch in their address to find out where they were actually supposed to go after they had been coming to that location for the last decade. And I just think things like this, every little thing causes a problem. And it's not good for voting. We're supposed to be making this

I mean, not like super easy, you know, but if you're an eligible voter, it shouldn't be hard to vote. You know what I mean? You should be able to come in, sign in, get in the booth and do it. Or if you want to mail in ballot, get the ballot delivered to you, fill it out and mail it in. And I think we're causing problems. We're causing confusion. And it affects people from both parties. It's not just Democrats. It's everybody. And it's not fair to voters, everybody. Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, everything. That's what upsets me.

And Bob, you alluded to the primary election, which was significant in Pennsylvania, partially because it took a couple weeks for the results to come down and be official, which we had a similar situation here in Baltimore where we didn't know who the next Democratic nominee for mayor was going to be for, I think, about 18 days after the votes were cast. Have precautions, have steps been taken to get those results sooner?

because we know that there might be an effort to stop counting those votes. So from what I understand, and I don't speak from firsthand knowledge because I'm not an elected commissioner, from what I understand, the machines they used to count the ballots were not set up for pandemic-level mail-in ballots. They were purchased and

ordered based on what they anticipated the mail-in vote to be in 2019. That's a looking forward, this is what it was. From what I understand, they have increased that capacity. Either they got faster machines or they have more machines. So they should be able to process more ballots.

But I don't know the specifics of that, like Gwenda said. But having spoken to a couple of the commissioners since the summertime, they were increasing their capacity to count ballots. That said, there's going to be a lot more ballots in the general election than there was in the primary. More people signed up to mail-in vote. More people vote in a general than a primary. So I don't know what their capacity is. It's a better question for one of the three city commissioners. But this could be a little while, especially if

Trump is leading in Pennsylvania on election night in the next day, because the mail-in ballots are where we obviously know that it's a huge democratic five to one. I think that's the number going around. I'm not sure, but there's a huge difference there. And a lot of, we're talking about 2 million ballots. I'm afraid of what the unrest is going to be afterwards, you know?

And Akayla, let's end with you. What are you going to be looking for, keeping an eye on in these last few weeks before the election? And then also, if you want to comment on the sort of irony of all these top Republican officials apparently contracting COVID at the White House while they're celebrating the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett.

who Republicans want to appoint on the Supreme Court so she can be in place to help make a ruling if this election gets contested and goes to the Supreme Court after November 3rd.

Yeah, so we're going to be pretty busy the next couple of weeks. We're focusing, you know, less on horse race, kind of like we were really focused on like flipable Senate seats and what's going to happen in battleground races. And now we're kind of just trying to wrap our heads around technical issues with ballots and what's going to happen and all the new legislation that's happening in crucial states, including Pennsylvania. So kind of trying to report out really what is our...

our ballot's going to be counted, what are the possible issues and what's in place to prevent that from being done in a fair and quick way. As far as the Republicans who have contracted COVID, I mean, I...

I don't have a whole lot to say other than I think people were just, I think most people just knew that it was a matter of time before something like this was going to happen. It's unfortunate to have a crisis like this at the top levels of government, particularly when the country is in such a vulnerable position. But they were not, I mean, they weren't taking necessary precautions. That much is clear from, you know, we saw during the RNC to the CDC.

Amy Coney Barrett's nomination meeting, I guess, at the White House recently, where it's the super spreader event where most of these cases are being traced back to. So, yeah, I guess it's unfortunate that the party in charge is continuing to put the country in kind of a stranglehold and that the Democrats aren't necessarily going to, you know, Schumer only has so much control, but they're going to allow them to postpone

or fast track or do whatever they need to do with Amy Coney Barrett's nomination. And I think it's unfortunate that an avoidable virus is putting the country again in this position that we've been kind of, I don't know, digging ourselves into since March. But yeah, I mean, I think everyone thinks that it's overall, it's unfortunate. Yeah.

All right. Well, Kayla Lacey and Bob Stewart, thank you both for joining us. And we'll keep checking in with you both, you know, as we get closer to that big day, November 3rd, where, I mean, we might not really know anything at that point, but that'll be election day. Thank you both for joining us. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us at The Real News Network. All right. Thank you for listening to this installment of The Run-Up.

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