It appears that nothing says “saving Democracy” like a good old-fashioned military coup. A new survey from the Center for Strategic Politics found that 59 percent of Democrats would favor a military coup to remove President Donald Trump from office. All it took was four years out of power for these Democratic voters to embrace a coup d’état to negate the results of the last election. What is particularly chilling is that many of these voters still portray themselves as defending democracy by calling for a military takeover. It is akin to supporting drive-by shootings to combat gun violence. That is not the only shocker in this survey.According to the Center, roughly six in 10 (59%) Democrats polled said they would feel “very positive” or “somewhat positive” if the US military removed Trump and seized control of the American government.
The vast majority, of course, would be happy if Trump were impeached and removed from office (87%) or ousted by his cabinet via the 25th Amendment (84%).
The survey also shows the same overwhelming support for socialism in the new Democratic Party. What is surprising is the support for public ownership of industries. That includes almost half (46%) supporting public ownership and operation of grocery stores. Almost 40 percent support public ownership and operation of restaurants. (39%).
I have previously said that I do not recognize the current Democratic Party as someone raised in a politically active and liberal Democratic family. I first became estranged from the party over the radical shift from a pro-free speech party to one that supported censorship and speech curtailment.
Despite many who claim that the Democratic Socialists represent a small fraction of the party, these polls show a consistent and growing majority in support of socialism.
The addition of support for a military coup shows the manifestation of a rage addiction in America. Democratic leaders are now calling for trashing core constitutional institutions or values. When some of us criticized moves to pack the Supreme Court, leaders like Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom accused us of engaging in mere “nostalgia.”
It is the same “nostalgia” that leaves many of us shocked at the support for a military coup. On our 250th anniversary, we face yet again Benjamin Franklin’s warning that this is a Republic if we can keep it.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor who teaches a class on the Constitution and the Supreme Court and is the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
If you love your country, invest 5 minutes of your time and read the American Oath of Office.
Over the past 30 years Republican leaders have been the most disloyal leaders in America.
From torture, to black site prisons, to blacklisting to trying to illegally overturn the 14th Amendment – Republican leaders win the disloyalty prize! Not even close!
Daily lies from ANON!!
So what to do when you’re a movement without ideas, facts, arguments, the law? You pound the person or the source: Trump’s a fascist, Musk an oligarch, “MAGA morons,” a dissenting juror lied on his questionnaire . . .
True to form, rather than dealing with the despicable fact that their movement endorses violence to achieve political power, Leftists attack the organization that conducted this poll:
“The poll did not capture a genuine political movement; it captured how easily people can be manipulated by loaded language.”
The bitter irony here is that Leftists are eating their own. That poll (whose methodology and dates are widely available) was conducted by the Center for Strategic Politics (CSP), a *Leftist* organization — who I’m sure will be happy to know that they use “loaded language.” In this case, CSP polled *democrats*, who I’m sure will be happy to know that they are “easily manipulated.”
BTW, I thought the Left was against election interference and coups.
In 2023, at General Mark Milley’s retirement speech. Milley provided maybe the greatest speech of the 21st Century on how to prevent coups in America. It’s a great read, check it out.
Trolls are useless human beings.
Trolls serve no purpose.
A fruit fly contributes more to society and the environment than trolls do.
Fruit fly = Sally = Troll
You tube of speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9to_1UYH5rE
The polling question asks “How would you feel to wake up to find…?”
Turley’s headline morphs that passive-observer sentiment into the antecedent-proactive “would support…?”
These are very different framings of the hypothetical, the first where the poll responder has no control over the removal of the President, and the 2nd implying forethought and agency-of-opinion.
Newsflash: The wording of any poll can be used to manipulate the outcome — AND post-poll, the deceitful infowarrior craftily reframes how to interpret poll’s meaning. Pardon me if I’m not opinion-nudged by your headline, JT. Just the opposite, I’m less trusting of your journalistic objectivity.
Turley is not a journalist.
But he is more objective and honest than 90% of MSM.
This poll is just another example of left wing socialists growing infestation in the Democrat party.
You know what they say about polls.
It’s an exaggeration based on a hypothetical. This is what passes as information these days. What’s most alarming is the way some readers sop it up because they want to believe it. But why would someone want to believe there is broad support for a military coup? Easy…it’s fodder for demonic-level oppo-branding.
What this poll means is that those on the left are more extreme than the rest of us and that they have accute TDS. \
Criticism of the poll, or its language even if valid does not change that.
While this poll does not actually tell us what democrats WILL do if they can. or what they WOULD support as a real world scenario – as an example I DOUBT the left would be happy with a military Coup led by Hegseth what it does tell us is how wide the overton window is for the left, what their mood is and the extent of their TDS.
Attacks on the poll, its methodology, its language do not change that.
John Say, wrong as usual. You cannot dismiss the poll’s language, because the language completely changes the meaning. Respondents weren’t asked if they supported a lawless, violent coup. According to the data released by the Center for Strategic Politics on September 21, 2026, they were asked how they would react if military leaders acted “under a stated rationale of safeguarding the Constitution.” Respondents were reacting to the concept of protecting the rule of law, not abandoning it. This is why reading for comprehension is important.
Your example regarding Pete Hegseth is factually backward. You noted that the left wouldn’t support a coup led by Hegseth. That is correct, but for the wrong reasons. Hegseth is President Trump’s Defense Secretary. In any hypothetical scenario where the military moves to remove the President, Hegseth’s leadership would be the one being bypassed or stripped of power, not leading the charge against his own administration.
The data explicitly disproves your claim about a wide Overton window for radical options. The very same survey shows that respondents overwhelmingly prefer traditional, legal, and institutional processes. Formal impeachment and conviction received 87% approval, and using the 25th Amendment received 84% approval. Both legal avenues scored vastly higher than military intervention, proving that institutional norms remain the strong preference.
Attacking the poll’s methodology isn’t a distraction—it’s pointing out that you are misinterpreting a highly specific, constitutionally-framed question to confirm a bias about “extremism.”
Paragraph 1. John Say did Not say that “Respondents were asked if they supported a lawless, violent coup.
Paragraph 2. Your Pete Hegseth example is as stupidly false as they come. In “Mutiny on the Bounty,” it was Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, who seized control and led the mutineers.
Paragraph 3. Breaking News! X had to look up on AI what an Overton Window meant. Easy to see because X doesn’t understand what it means, and Paragraph 3 makes no sense in its criticism of what Say said.
Paragraph 4. Looks like X is “misinterpreting a highly specific, constitutionally-framed question to confirm a bias” that he or she carries to this blog every single day. Grow up.
Turley is an opinion journalist. He writes almost daily opinion pieces on current events, politics and law. He is objective in terms of elevating facts over false narratives. But his journalism takes on a distinctly activist flavor in selecting topics to write about.
News selection is the inscrutable black box of the activist journalist. I’ve searched the journalism grad schools, and there are ZERO courses on the topic of news selection. I’ve searched the published standards of news orgs, and again, there are no written standards guiding news selection. This omission makes journalism the tawdry black art it is, and allows for political fragmentation of the audience.
Selections may be looking for responses to determine whether or not people can recognize basic principles when given a more complex context. I’m certain professor Turley recognizes principles.
Pretty sure if you polled republicans or the general public with the same questions you would not get a tiny fraction of “happy” answers.
Pretty sure if you polled the same thing regarding Biden the only thing that would get signifcant support would be using the 25th amendment,
Though I would suggest people read the 25th amendment
Ultimately the 25th amendment requires a 2/3 vote by the house and senate to remove a president that opposes removal.
It is HARDER than impeachment.
John Say,
Your assumption about how Republicans or the general public would answer is historically disproven. We don’t have to guess how the other side would react because we have real-world data. Following the January 6th Capitol riot, multiple national polls tracked public sentiment on removing a president. For instance, an Ipsos/ABC News poll showed that while 94% of Democrats supported immediate removal, a notable 13% of Republicans and 58% of Independents also supported extraordinary, immediate removal before the term officially expired. When a political figure is viewed as an existential threat, a significant portion of any party’s base becomes willing to entertain extreme measures.
You are entirely correct about the high bar of Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, but you miss why it scored so high in the poll. You are right that if a president contests their removal under the 25th Amendment, it ultimately requires a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate—a threshold that is structurally harder to reach than the simple majority needed for a House impeachment. However, the Center for Strategic Politics survey showed that 84% of respondents favored using the 25th Amendment. They weren’t cheering for it because they thought it was “easy”; they favored it because it is an explicitly constitutional, legal process run by the Cabinet and Congress, rather than a lawless action.
The distinction isn’t partisan; it’s institutional. The data across the board reveals that the public overwhelmingly favors formal, lawful avenues (like impeachment at 87% and the 25th Amendment at 84%) over extra-constitutional ones. The core driver of these high numbers isn’t a lack of understanding of constitutional mechanics, but a strong preference for using institutional checks and balances.
You just want to frame the left as radical extremists because it’s easier. The radical right attacked Congress on Jan 6.
If you love your country, read the president’s Oath of Office! Simply read the Oath of Office.
For the past 25 years, Democrats have been more loyal Americans than any Republican president. We forget George W. Bush also supported foreign models of governing and rejected James Madison’s American model of government.
So what you are saying is if the Democrats try to stop Bush & Trump’s coup, that is a coup?
The sad fact is that a successful coup already took place back in 1963 and both the Republicans and the Democrats have been sharing the reigns of unConstitutional power ever since. IF (big “if”) we still had a military loyal to their oath, we would have had troops surrounding Washington DC sixty years ago, and perp-walking a long string of politicians, bureaucrats, and judges, toward a trial and military tribunal.
Now who would even ask such a polling question?
Thomas J. Pritzker