Short Take: What is the evidence that this is an attempted coup?

Is this what's going on a revolution? Is it an existential threat to our life and our future in America, to know America as Vice President Pence said in the Republican convention speech, the question is not between Democrat versus Republican. The question is whether America will remain America.

What are your thoughts on that? Let me say that as a historian, I use the terms revolution with a lot of specificity and I use them carefully. To answer your question, no, this is not a revolution. This is an attempted coup d'etat and there's a difference. A revolution is a mass movement of the people to overthrow the government. We're not saying a mass movement of the people.

We're seeing a situation of the tail wagging the dog. You know, post-1917 Russia, the Russian propagandists framed what happened in 1917, the seizure of power as a revolution, but it wasn't. The masses didn't revolt.

Russia's population was 80% peasants and they did nothing. It was a small, dedicated, fanatical band of armed insurrectionists who seized power. That's a coup d'etat, as Russian historian Richard Pipes has pointed out. It's not a revolution. A revolution is the language of the propagandists who wanted you to believe that's what it is and that's what we're seeing here. You'll see them saying, revolution, revolution, which implies, again, a mass movement of insurrectionists.

We're not seeing that. This is a, I think most Americans want to live their lives freely. They want law and order. They want peace. They don't want their businesses burned to the ground.

They don't want their children indoctrinated. They want to live their lives, but we are seeing a small, dedicated band of violent insurrectionists who are attempting a coup d'etat. By the way, it's important to understand that what we're seeing here by these people, in addition to the fact that they want to give the impression that it is a revolution, the coup d'etat stretches to the election. Look at the effort to seize the election through mail-in ballots. I believe, personally, regardless of whether you like Donald Trump, that's another conversation for another time.

I personally think the choices are quite clear. I don't see how anyone in their right mind could vote for Joe Biden. That said, the left knows they can't win this election unless they steal it.

They have to steal it. And that means mail-in ballots. And so what I fear is going to happen is that on the night of the election, that Donald Trump will be declared a kind of tentative winner. And then in the weeks that come, the left will scream, this is my prediction, oh, ballots are now starting to come in that shows that Trump didn't win Michigan, or he didn't win Wisconsin, or he didn't win Wisconsin, or he didn't win key swing states or counties. And then there's this long legal battle, kind of like the hanging chads way back in whatever year that was, 2000, I guess. And this country is dragged through the mud yet again. So this is all part of the attempted coup d'etat.