Donald Trump’s demand that the Constitution be repealed is his most virulently anti-democratic declaration to date, and he appears unaware of the feelings of people who rejected election-honest candidates in the midterm elections.
The former president may be desperately trying to stir up controversies and outrage among his loyal fans in order to give his so far unsuccessful 2024 White House campaign some oomph.
Trump’s remarks on his Truth Social network, which anyone should be able to reject, are exposing the usual moral hesitancy of leading Republicans who won’t disown the former president. But his most recent outburst also supports the claims made by some Republicans who believe it is time to let go of Trump’s obsession with the 2020 presidential election.
While it is still far too early to rule out Trump’s chances of winning the GOP nomination in 2024, his actions since declaring his third run for president also raise the possibility that his never-ending quest to shock and enrage his base now necessitates going so far to the right that he ends up on the extremist fringe and on the verge of self-parody. In the brief period he has been a candidate, he has dined with a White nationalist Holocaust denier and professed support for the rioters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
When Trump’s claim regarding the Constitution was relayed by Pam Brown of HEADLINESFOREVER on Saturday, Georgia’s Secretary of State Office’s top operating officer, Gabriel Sterling, smiled at the scepticism.
Suspending the Constitution is absurd and insane. Come on man, seriously?” exclaimed Sterling, a Republican who assisted in presiding over Georgia’s 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden won the state. Republicans and Americans alike, in my opinion, are saying more and more, “Ok, I’m good, I’m done with this now, I’m going to go on to the next thing.”
Trump’s tirade might be a precursor of a sluggish 2024 campaign.
What Trump’s latest issue says about a presidential campaign that has been engulfed by one far-right authoritarian sideshow after another is the most pressing question it raises.
Trump has encouraged extremists and insurrectionists instead of canvassing the country, making a case on the economy, health care, and immigration, or articulating a blueprint for the future.
To a time when the rapper formerly known as Ye is in the midst of an egregious antisemitic outburst and worshipping Adolf Hitler, he entertained Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago last month. At that dinner, Nick Fuentes, a far-right Holocaust denier, also attended. Although Trump insisted he was unaware of Fuentes, the previous president has yet to denounce his political views. In a fundraising video last week, Trump praised the mob that invaded the Capitol in the worst assault on US democracy in modern times, once more endorsing violence as a legitimate way to address political grievances.
The House select committee looking into January 6 has described him as a clear and present danger to American democracy and met on Friday to discuss criminal referrals to the Justice Department. His social media assault on the Constitution seems to be proving their point.
No sincere person can now deny that Trump is an opponent of the Constitution, according to Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, vice head of the committee. Trump’s most recent irrational social media statement might even increase his legal risk as the Justice Department looks for indications of his thinking as it looks into his actions prior to the attack on the Capitol.
Trump’s decision to step up his authoritarianism also comes after a period in which the majority of the country, at least in crucial swing states, rejected his candidates for the midterm elections and his 2020 election denialism, with a final test on Tuesday in the Georgia Senate runoff. It seems to make it even less probable that the former president will be the kind of candidate who could win among a larger national population, even if he gets the Republican nomination. After all, his message was unsuccessful in the two elections that followed in 2020 and 2022. A call to simply trash the Constitution might seem like a stretch and reflect the former president’s growing detachment from reality, even in the wilder corners of the GOP, which Trump has dominated since 2015.