Paul Cobaugh is a military veteran who spent many years in intelligence operations, decoding propaganda. This post is straight talk from a patriot and a vet. His blog is “Truth Against Threats.”
TAT readers,
This is a quick update. For the next week or so, I have an erratic schedule that will keep me from the longer essays, but will intermittently bring you shorter, very succinct thoughts regarding our ongoing coup by a now, fully fascist Republican Party. There is simply no longer a Conservative Party. Today’s GOP has an exclusively MAGA agenda and has either stood by and cowardly watched the ongoing coup, or offered tacit support.
Speaker Mike Johnson meekly or rather sneakily, trolls the halls of our Capital Building, cheerleading and garnering votes for the Trump/ Musk/ Putin coup. The business of the US is being shoved aside in order to allow Trump/ Musk, dictatorial powers that allow them to overthrow our republic and replace it with profit and power-driven tyranny. VP Vance, antagonizing our allies in Europe while concurrently backing the AfD, Germany’s extreme, right-wing party, that Musk supports.
Trump’s statements claiming that, “nothing is illegal when saving your country,” which he began claiming, when our court system started throwing legitimate legal roadblocks into his and DOGE’s coup machinery. My friends and fellow citizens, Trump’s chaos is intentional and is a diversion from his intended goal, to place all relevant power under the auspices of the Oval Office. Yes, for those that have been reading TAT for a while now, know that this is exactly the 180-day Transition Playbook from Project 2025.Why won’t the media call it a coup?
As indicated in my ongoing explanations about the coup, time is critical now, if we are to stop or slow this coup’s steamrolling of our constitutional republic. This is Trump’s second attempt, with January 6th, 2021 being his first try. Apparently, our hand-picked SCOTUS decided to forgive and forget that attempt and gave him a second opportunity. Now, we have no Congress, no SCOTUS and an Executive Branch, bursting at the seams with the tyrannical power that our founding fathers decided to limit with a system of “checks and balances.” Today’s GOP, has devolved that system incrementally now for years. 2025, is the year that it came all together for them and resulting in the only major challenge to our republic, other than the Civil War.
- Why won’t the media call it a coup
- Trump, Musk and the MAGA GOP’s, coup attempt: fighting back! Part II in a series
- Chaos is the point
Trump’s pre negotiation concessions to Putin, before talking with him about Ukraine, is a shared, power-play between Trump and Putin. His Gaza plan, a recipe for a much larger war in the Middle East and theirs and Modi’s plan to isolate China, while carving up the rest of the world into serfdom imposing fiefdoms for the three of them.
Considering my extensive background in the USSOCOM, Special Operations community, I’m on solid ground calling Trump, Putin’s and Modi’s efforts radical, globally dangerous actions, a power play unseen on the world stage, since Hitler, Mussolini and Japan’s maneuvering just prior to and throughout WW II. Americans during that time period were also slow to acknowledge and understand the threat that FDR and Churchill understood. Then like now, it was the GOP and American oligarchy that were the obstacles to preparing for war and fighting global fascism. There is no excuse now for Americans, regardless of party affiliation, to deny this coup and hostile takeover.
Deep inside all Americans that respect and honor our constitution and true American values, lies a gene of resistance. It appears whenever tyranny raises its ugly head and threatens democracy, ours or the world’s. Trump, Putin and Musk, don’t understand patriotic Americans dedication to our actual values and guaranteed constitutional rights. They will find out soon enough if they persist. As I always say, this is not about party, this is quite plainly, about being a true patriot. Real Americans do not worship God, guns and Trump as American values. Real Americans don’t respect or tolerate what I call the Four Horsemen of the MAGA Apocalypse, Autocracy, Oligarchy, White Christian Nationalism and Political Violence.
True principled conservatives have now already left the party or vote against it. Those who voted for Trump, have been brainwashed and no longer have the ability to see truth. Stop trying to convince them. When I write, I write for honest citizens, never a party. This is America for heaven’s sake, not Russia, China, Iran or otherwise. We all get a say and freedom to think as we wish, worship or not, and we all have a citizen’s obligation, to defend our nation and its real values.
Trump and Musk both are schoolyard bullies. This means that at heart, they are both cowards that will fold in the face of overwhelming resistance. It is up to all Americans to participate and stop allowing the MAGA crowd to misinterpret our history, our values and especially our constitution, simply to support their charismatic Pied Piper. My intentions are to put every legal roadblock in front of the coup-crowd publicly. If this is dangerous in the face of intimidation, then I say as did Admiral Farragut during the Civil War, “damn the torpedos, full speed ahead.”
I aim to continue writing the truth about this coup and its leaders and followers. All of you that are exploding my follower statistics are doing the same. It is what we do as Americans. I’m beyond proud of all of you and am humbly honored, to be among such patriots.
My warmest regards to all,
Paul
© 2025 Paul Cobaugh
San Antonio, TX
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What we need from the “true principled conservatives “ is money. True principled democrats, those who have argued for balanced power since Reagan, don’t have any. Some people with deep pockets and real values need to fund an alternative to bullshit news funded by deep pockets. Otherwise, no one will ever know where their representative government went.
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Brazil is doing with Bolsonaro what the US should have done with Trump.
How interesting that the first cartoon shows Trump shooting the constitution, yet the constitution doesn’t shoot back (that would require personification). When that punk kid in PA failed in his assassination attempt, I thought the country was spared a horrible fate. But I find myself wondering whether things would be better off now had that punk kid’s attempt been successful. Perhaps I’m saying the quiet part out loud, but it’s a very disturbing thought that I don’t advocate.
If “he who saves his country violates no law,” who will save the country from Trump/Musk and how? We have procedures in place that are clearly not working (e.g., congressional oversight, impeachment with conviction in the senate). We were a republic if we could have kept it.
We have an evil wannabe dictator and a cult of personality. January 6 should have been rock bottom; it should have shocked the conscience of all Americans regardless of political ideology, thereby making Trump persona non grata. But Trump continues to have his enablers, and there is apparently no bottom to which he can stoop and lose their support.
Back when my students were reading books like Night, Animal Farm, The Diary of Anne Frank, etc., I emphasized that our rights and privileges as US citizens are not necessarily a given. I would often tell them “it” could happen here, and it’s up to us as citizens to ensure otherwise. But I never imagined any such things (“it”) would happen during my lifetime. Nonetheless, I’m afraid we are facing (the beginning of?) the end of our republic.
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“. . . dictatorial powers that allow them to overthrow our republic and replace it with profit and power-driven tyranny.“
That’s what the CONVICTED FELON and his sidekick may want but those behind the Project 2025 want to see a Christian Nationalist Theofascist State installed.
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