Donald Trump’s suggestion this weekend that the US Constitution should be scrapped in response to his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen prompted a largely muted response from Republicans , the latest sign that many Republican officials are reluctant to take on the former president even as he defies the country’s founding precepts.
Trump’s online posts Saturday, including a message in which he wrote that “UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD REQUIRES UNPRECEDENTED CURE!” — represented a significant escalation in his attacks on American democratic institutions and norms, which scholars said should be taken as a sign of how far he is willing to go to regain power.
“A massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the extinction of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump posted on the Truth Social platform. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not approve, false and fraudulent elections!”
But only a handful of Republican lawmakers have joined the White House and Democrats in condemning Trump’s claims. Representatives for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) did not respond to requests for comment Sunday.
Last month, McCarthy announced that Republicans would read every word of the Constitution aloud on the House floor when the GOP took control of the chamber in January.
Some Republican lawmakers who were asked on Sunday political talk shows about Trump’s latest missive said they disagreed with the former president. However, most were still hesitant to say they would oppose Trump if he becomes the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee.
Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio), chairman of the Republican Governance Caucus, avoided answering directly when asked on ABC’s “This Week” about Trump’s comments, saying he was “not in the habit of speaking in his tweet of the day” when Trump was in office. When pressed by host George Stephanopoulos, Joyce said he would “support whoever the Republican candidate is” but didn’t think Trump “could make it.”
“Well, first of all, he hasn’t, he doesn’t have the ability to suspend the Constitution,” Joyce said. “You know, it says a lot, but that doesn’t mean it’s never going to happen.”
Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, said there has been a legitimate intellectual debate among constitutional scholars about whether the flaws in the nation’s founding documents are so fundamental that there should be ‘have a new constitutional convention.
However, what Trump is engaging in is “not debate, but destruction,” Tribe said in an interview. “What he’s doing is openly screaming in desperation that anything standing in his way of becoming all-powerful should be swept away.”
Trump announced his re-election campaign last month after several Trump-backed candidates lost key races in the midterm elections, complicating questions within the Republican Party about how to navigate its relationship with former president
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While Tribe acknowledged that Trump has said a lot of outrageous things that shouldn’t always get attention, he doesn’t think this latest statement should be dismissed, especially after Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election went viral. lead a pro-Trump mob to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
“It’s a signature statement. In a way, it says the quiet part out loud: that he has no reverence for country, nothing but himself,” Tribe said. “That’s like saying, ‘Do you want to see an insurrection?’ I will show you an insurrection. I’ll just tear everything apart. “
On Sunday, Trump’s defenders moved to quell the controversy. A Republican operative close to the former president, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, argued that the message did not advocate or literally call for the Constitution to be extinguished.
When asked to clarify how Trump wasn’t at least advocating for terminating the Constitution, the agent said: “He’s making a comparison to the unprecedented nature of Big Tech’s meddling in the 2020 election to benefit Joe Biden with the unprecedented act of ending the Constitution.” suggesting without evidence that tech platforms had tipped the scales for Biden in 2020.
Trump’s posts on Saturday came a day after new Twitter owner Elon Musk said he would expose how Twitter engaged in “suppressing free speech” ahead of the 2020 election. But his ” Twitter files” did not show that the tech giant bowed to the will of Democrats.
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Some members of the GOP were louder in their disapproval of Trump’s comments. On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) said he “absolutely” condemned Trump’s comments, but stressed there is still a long political process before Trump can be considered a front-runner of 2024.
“I disagree with the statement that Trump has made. Trump has made, you know, a thousand statements that I don’t agree with,” Turner said. He added that voters “will certainly take a statement like this into account when evaluating a candidate.”
Trump’s comments drew sharp rebuke from the White House and several Democrats, as well as Republicans who have fallen out of favor within their own party for their longstanding criticism of Trump. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) called Trump an enemy of the Constitution, and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) questioned how his fellow Republicans could continue to support him.
“With the former president calling for the constitution to be thrown out, not a single conservative can legitimately support him, not a single supporter can be considered a conservative,” Kinzinger tweeted on Sunday, tagging the Twitter handles in his message of McCarthy, too. as Reps. Elise Stefanik (RN.Y.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). “This is crazy. Trump hates the constitution.”
Congressman-elect Mike Lawler (RNY) echoed several other Republicans in his responses to Trump, saying overall it was time to look forward, rather than re-litigate the 2020 election.
“The Constitution is in place for a reason, to protect the rights of all Americans. And so I certainly don’t endorse it [Trump’s] language or that sentiment,” Lawler said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I think the former president would do well to focus on the future if he runs for president again.”
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who will become the Democratic minority leader in January, dismissed Trump’s comments as another “extraordinary” statement from the former president and ultimately an identity crisis for the GOP.
“I thought that was an odd statement, but Republicans will have to sort out their issues with the former president and decide whether they’re going to break with him and return to some semblance of reasonableness or continue to lean toward extremism. , not just Trump, but of Trumpism,” Jeffries said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Several top Republicans, including former Vice President Mike Pence, issued little rebuke to Trump recently after he dined with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and rapper Ye, both of whom have a history of anti-Semitic comments.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu said he believed Trump “probably understands” that the dinner crossed a line, but he hesitated to blame Trump or his rhetoric for a rise in anti-Semitism. He on the other hand he blamed social media for increasing these divisions.
“There are many, many blessings of the Internet age, but it also comes with a curse. And the curse is polarization,” Netanyahu said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Anti-Semitism, he said, is “the oldest hatred, as I say, one of the oldest hatreds of mankind. It was bad then, it’s bad now. But it probably has an extra life in the United States and other countries in the Internet age.”
Isaac Arnsdorf, Karoun Demirjian, Toluse Olorunnipa and Missy Ryan contributed to this report.
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