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James Baker, the former FBI official currently on a media tour, gets very offended when anyone suggests that he was part of an attempted "coup." Of course that's not how these people would characterize their actions. But in totality, what they did 100% amounted to a "soft coup"
If the most powerful law enforcement and intelligence officials in the country get together to surveil and entrap members of a campaign because they believe the candidate poses a National Security Threat, that can be reasonably described as a "soft coup"
Later, of course, the top person in the Justice Department and the top person in the FBI got together to plot extra-legal presidential removal schemes, such as "wearing a wire" and recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment on spurious grounds
That's why I use the phrase "soft coup," because it doesn't require conscious intentionality at any given moment: it just reflects a widespread desire to use extraordinary tactics to impede the candidate, and then even remove him once he assumed office
"Coup" gives the impression of a military brigade invading the White House and arresting the president. Obviously that didn't happen, and almost certainly couldn't happen. "Soft coup" better captures the broad scope of these unprecedented security state actions
