Despite the fact that he writes for Newsmax, which recently published a call for an anti-Obama coup, I generally enjoy reading Ronald Kessler's stuff. I've also chatted with him a couple times and found him to be a nice guy.

That said, I'm perplexed by the extent to which Kessler's new column on Donald Trump, "The Real Story on Donald Trump", replicates his 2008 offering "Behind the Scenes with Donald Trump," despite being billed as the product of "the first interview [Anthony] 'Tony' P.

Take a look at this April 27, 2009 column by coup daydreamer John L. Perry, who's identified as a "regular columnist for Newsmax.com." The title--"Obama, the Puppet President"--gives you a sense of where Perry's going, but the really good stuff comes at the end (Perry's a good finisher, apparently):

[I]s there some individual, off stage, who instructed the president of the United States to perform that embarrassing, 180-degrees reversal [on torture prosecutions]? If so, who is that master puppeteer?

TPM has posted Newsmax's response to that Obama-coup column. Rachel Slajda does a nice job highlighting the hollowness of spokesperson Paula Pradine's claim that John L. Perry has "no official relationship" with Newsmax. But another Pradine claim--namely, that Perry's column was descriptive rather than proscriptive--is allowed to go unchallenged.

That warning comes courtesy of an "exclusive interview" with Glenn Beck. You can find it in the October issue, pictured above, but it's already getting major play on Newsmax.com--which, lest we forget, recently published and then deleted a call for a military coup.

For what it's worth, Michael Savage was whipping up similar proto-Nazi fears back in March

The column in question, by John L. Perry--oddly, an alum of both the LBJ and Carter administrations--has since been taken down. But Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has posted it in its entirety.

Of course, as a Phoenix colleague of mine notes, it'll be a *gentle* coup....

(From TPM, via Greg Mitchell