People really seem to struggle with the word “coup.”
During the impeachment ordeal of Bill Clinton, Democrats and their journalistic allies routinely denounced the effort as a “coup.” Some 20 years later, Republicans and their supporters called the impeachment of Donald Trump a “coup” as well.
Neither of these events was a coup. According to the dictionary, a coup means to overthrow the government, usually by force. It’s short for “coup d’etat,” which is illegal. The impeachment power is laid out in America’s rulebook – the Constitution – in black and white.
In any endeavor – sports, law, business, chess, Dungeons & Dragons, whatever – it is axiomatically true that if you play within the rules, you cannot be breaking them.
But as silly as all the coup talk was, it at least had a certain superficial plausibility within the bounds of political hyperbole and poetic license. Impeachment was an effort to fire the head of state, after all.