If he were found on a NYC street right now, he'd probably run afoul of Mayor Adams' push to consign the mad into asylums
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Really?
“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution”
I imagine that only the most ardent political junkie is aware, today, of Trump’s call yesterday for new elections, but his enemies on both sides will make sure it is brought to the general population’s attention very soon, and keep it prominent. And, while the Never-Trumpers will fret and fume, they’re pretty much irrelevant; it’s the Only—Trumpers I worry about, because if they stay home, they are a large enough bloc to throw the 2024 election to the Democrats. If you read the comments to the two articles linked below, you’ll see that there are many of them, and they aren’t letting go. That could doom us to a Governor Noisome presidency for at least another for years, even after the country is shed of Biden..
This Hot Air commentator has thoughts:
Trump commits political suicide
Let’s look at this both politically and ethically and think about what he is saying.
POLITICALLY
There are several obvious things about Trump’s statement that are simply politically stupid. Like, really really stupid. Assuming there were no legal or ethical barriers to either calling a new election or suspending the Constitution (stay with me here, I know that is insane!), it is still politically stupid.
America is facing huge economic problems, international problems, and huge internal divisions that are tearing the country apart. Nobody but a small fringe wants to re-litigate the 2020 elections. Not only is that intuitively obvious, the 2022 midterm elections put an exclamation point on that fact. Candidates that looked back to the 2020 elections lost, those who looked forward to solving problems won.
Imagine having an ad hoc presidential campaign or an effective coup in the midst of all the challenges we face. Our friends and adversaries would see a weak, divided America and international chaos would ensue. It would be a disaster. The world economy would be shaken far more than it is. It would be a crisis of enormous proportions.
Nobody wants that, except a few people who want to tear it all down. Trump would get creamed in an election–blamed for making things so much worse than they are.
Americans are done with 2020. Old news. Both election fraud and January 6th are in the rear-view mirror politically.
So politically Trump is tossing a grenade into the country. Few people want to see it explode.
ETHICALLY/LEGALLY
Where to begin? There is no legal basis for anything Trump has suggested. None. Zip. Nada. That is why he is suggesting suspending all legalities in the first place.
Basically, he is saying that in order to fix things we have to destroy everything. This is literally how Caesar came to power. Caesar never asserted that the Roman Republic was over; theoretically, all the same safeguards remained in place. Merely suspended during his dictatorship.
Yeah, right. Once you toss it all out, it’s gone. In order to accomplish what Trump is advocating you would need a coup. Nobody in power today–not the Courts, not Congress, and certainly not the Executive Branch–would even think of establishing a legal basis for a new election or installation of Trump as the legitimate winner, even if it were possible.
So the only way to do what Trump is demanding is a coup. Goodbye America.
Yeah, no.
THOUGHTS
I don’t see how Trump doesn’t lose even more support after this outburst. For those of us who are political geeks the temptation is to scream “this is it!,” but I doubt that is exactly true. Most people are not process oriented. They support Trump because they were better off under his leadership than Biden’s. They think he is on their side, and the other side is terrible.
Well, the other side IS terrible. But destroying everything to take them down is much worse. I have often used the Roman Empire as an analogy to the US because the parallels are compelling. Our troubles in recent decades mirror in important ways the troubles of the late Republic era in Rome.
Well, we know how that ended. Caesar. Then Augustus, who was a pretty good emperor, and then total disaster. Caesar’s short dictatorship and its end were fatal to the Republic. Rome persisted but did not become better. It became worse in the most important way–liberty for its citizens.
It’s not that the Republic wasn’t flawed or was entirely free–it wasn’t. That is the nature of human life. But the flaws corrected by naming an Emperor were supplanted by flaws infinitely worse. Dictatorship is bad, and everybody knows that.
I think that most Americans will recoil at Trump’s outburst. I certainly did. And while many will indulge in an impulse to defend him because they have liked him, their zeal to do so will diminish over time. How much effort will most people want to put into defending the indefensible?
Trump is becoming like Kanye. Saying more and more outrageous things, driving their support down to a hardcore group who will bear any humiliation.
I can’t defend Trump’s call to toss out the Constitution (or any legal procedures that pass Court muster).
And this, from another former Trump supporter: (bolding added)
…. What is going on with Trump? It’s a legitimate question. I ask as someone who voted for him twice and who, up until relatively recently, wouldn’t have hesitated to vote for him a third time. I’ve had my doubts recently, and his recent reaction to the release of “the Twitter files” is once again giving me pause.
Donald Trump seems to think revelations from the release of internal Twitter communications on the censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop story are cause for ignoring the Constitution and conducting a new election.
…. Look, I’ve said before I think Trump got screwed in 2020. Between illegal changes to election laws in various states and election irregularities (that went uninvestigated), there’s enough reason to question the results of the 2020 election. But we’re way, way, way past the point of being able to do anything about it. Does that suck? Yes, absolutely. But Trump’s rhetoric on the 2020 election suggests that he’s still taking the issue personally rather than using it as a warning to all Republicans that they need to learn from those problems to fix them to ensure that the integrity of future elections is not compromised. As a candidate for president, his message should be about looking forward, not backward, and he can’t seem to do that. In fact, he’s so obsessed with looking backward that he’s literally calling for an election to be tossed out simply because one story was censored on Twitter.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry about the widespread election fraud and irregularities that plagued the 2020 vote. Certainly not; the issue of election integrity is just as important today as it was two years ago — the botched election in Arizona is proof of that. But Trump needs to accept that the results of the 2020 election can’t be undone. Instead of whining about how he should have won, he should be focusing on issues that matter to people today (like the economy, the border, etc.) as well as having a comprehensive plan for election integrity that the majority of voters can get behind. Talking about throwing out an election is crazy.
The Constitution is more important than Trump’s ego, and if he doesn’t figure this out soon, he’s gonna see his supporters abandon him for a more stable Republican candidate.
