Trump hits new low with threat to the Constitution | Editorial

Even by Donald Trump’s standards, it has been a bumpy couple of weeks since he announced his latest bid for the White House.

First came a sexual assault lawsuit filed by a woman who alleged Trump raped her decades ago, followed by dinner with an antisemitic rapper and a white supremacist. Then the Oath Keepers leader who worked to keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election was convicted of seditious conspiracy, while a jury found Trump’s company guilty of tax fraud.

In the midst of all that, Trump managed to find a new low when he took to social media to call for the “termination” of the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election.

It’s not every century that a former president of the United States calls for ending democracy so he can somehow seize power.

Then again, in Trump’s seven chaotic years on the political stage, he has repeatedly demonstrated there is no bottom to the depths he will plumb.

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The lies, cruelty, corruption, buffoonery, incompetence, racism, misogyny, attacks on allies, pardons of cronies, tax dodging, draft dodging, discrediting of science, xenophobia, staff turnover, pandemic mismanagement, coup attempt, and stealing classified documents — to name just a few — all blur into never-ending bread and circuses.

Between the impeachments, investigations, lawsuits, and other garden-variety norm-busting, it is hard for even a cynic to keep up.

Sadly, much of the country has become inured to Trump’s dangerous behavior, while millions more still support him.

But every once in a while, even Trump still manages to shock the conscience.

As an encore, two days after his social media post urging the “termination” of the Constitution, he claimed that’s not what he said. Yet the post remained for all to see.

What compelled Trump to even reference gutting the Constitution? Confirmation that in 2020, Twitter blocked links to a dubious New York Post story about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop. The social media company also took down tweets that included links to naked pictures of the current president’s son. Ludicrously, there are claims that Twitter’s actions somehow cost Trump the election.

In Trump World, that’s enough to shred the document that has been America’s lodestar for 235 years. It would all be somewhat comical if Trump wasn’t a candidate for president. As such, he remains a danger to democracy.

Trump’s latest call to overturn a free and fair election is just a preview of what the country can expect if he manages to return to the White House. His first chaotic term brought the American Experiment to the brink. Trump 2.0 could be the knockout punch.

His brazen disregard for the Constitution fits a reckless pattern. He has attacked the U.S. Supreme Court, American intelligence agencies, the FBI, the Justice Department, federal judges, military generals, civil service workers, and soldiers who died in battle. That barrage, along with the spread of misinformation, divided the country and left U.S. democracy on a knife’s edge.

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What’s more disturbing is how most Republican leaders refuse to rebuke Trump’s attacks on the Constitution — despite swearing an oath to support and defend it.

It took several days for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to work up a monotone critique of Trump, while most Republican lawmakers remain mum. A few offered support for the Constitution but tiptoed around condemning the former president.

Denouncing a public official who wants to do away with the Constitution should not require a profile in courage.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who hopes to be the next speaker, previously tweeted a plan to read the Constitution aloud on the first day of the new Congress. Picture the farce: scores of Republican election deniers in the chamber of the building where a deadly insurrection occurred, reading the Constitution while supporting a man who would do away with it.

Republicans still can’t grasp that Trump has no allegiance to the GOP or the country. The insurrection showed the lengths he will go to burn democracy to the ground. And last weekend served notice that he’s perfectly willing to start by torching the Constitution.