When the Danger is Plain to See
Donald Trump's seditious attack on democracy for the "termination" of the Constitution should not be treated lightly
I was hoping the next time I’d write a dispatch about the former White House occupant would be because an indictment—or a series of indictments—had finally arrived. But the disgraced, twice-impeached, world-class sore loser Donald J. Trump has found a new way to remind us there is no bottom to hit and—as his niece, Mary Trump, has said—he will “burn everything down if he feels like he is going down."
His rage-filled comments this week on his Truth Social platform—following Elon Musk’s Friday night release of internal files intended to prove “free speech suppression” before the election by Twitter’s previous content moderation team—demonstrated he is accelerating downward.
“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote in another baseless effort to discredit the outcome of the 2020 election, this time because the Twitter team limited the distribution of a New York Post story involving the email contents of Hunter Biden’s possibly hacked laptop. (This included naked pictures of the genitals of the president’s son.)
“UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD REQUIRES UNPRECEDENTED CURE!” Trump shouted in another untethered, anti-democratic post.
It would be easy to just move on, as if this were just another deranged outburst from a desperate, unwell man who feels the vise is tightening. That’s the kind of thinking that has led too many people to dismiss the dangerous words of Kanye West, as if his inciting talk should be blamed on a mental disorder.
But we are in this predicament because Trump’s reckless words and behavior have been overlooked, minimized or normalized over and over, not just for the last seven years but for decades. (The mind drifts to the Central Park Five whose execution he demanded and never apologized for even after the five Black and Latino men were eventually found to be wrongly convicted.)
It would be one thing if he were merely a private citizen, even one who sat in the Oval Office and is now living in his Palm Beach retirement home in a rage-filled state of delirium. But while he remains the focus of multiple criminal investigations, he has officially declared himself a candidate for the US presidency in 2024 and is the presumed leader of the Republican Party. His seditious words, calling for the “termination” of the Constitution to placate his grievances and reinsert himself in office, remain a clear and present danger to democracy and the rule of law. For Donald Trump, the coup attempt is still underway.
If the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and deadly insurrection were not enough to convince GOP leaders to reject him, I’m not naive enough to assume his crystal-clear desire to discard the Constitution will change their determination to stand by him now—especially if they continue to fear blowback from an angry MAGA base and rage from the man himself.
Exhibit A on Sunday: “Well, he says a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen,” a nervous Ohio Rep. David Joyce finally said on ABC’s “This Week” after repeated attempts by anchor George Stephanopoulos to get him to weigh in on Trump’s dangerous threat. The GOP congressman also said he’d support “whoever the Republican nominee is.”
The failure of every self-defined constitutionalist and constitutional conservative to speak out loudly and clearly should be the final nail in the coffin of any pretense of principle. As White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement Saturday, “Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation and should be universally condemned.” The statement called the Constitution a “sacrosanct document.”
It’s worth pausing to remember the words of California Rep. Adam Schiff in the first impeachment trial in February 2020. Schiff’s closing argument, in which he called Trump “a man without character,” has not lost an ounce of its moral clarity, sting and prescience.
We must say enough—enough! He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again. He has compromised our elections, and he will do so again. You will not change him. You cannot constrain him. He is who he is. Truth matters little to him. What's right matters even less, and decency matters not at all.
This was less than a year before the 2020 election and the violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol:
Can we be confident that he will not continue to try to cheat in [this] very election? Can we be confident that Americans and not foreign powers will get to decide, and that the president will shun any further foreign interference in our Democratic affairs? The short, plain, sad, incontestable answer is no, you can't. You can't trust this president to do the right thing. Not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country. You just can't. He will not change and you know it.
Schiff ended like this:
"What are the odds if left in office that he will continue trying to cheat? I will tell you: 100 percent. A man without character or ethical compass will never find his way."
This weekend Donald J. Trump proved Adam Schiff’s point once again, but it should not be treated as just another tragic episode in a continuing saga.
Consider the call by NBC and MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance on both Twitter and her engaging Substack newsletter, Civil Discourse: “The question every Republican now has to answer is whether they support replacing the Constitution & our laws with Trump. That's what he's called for—a takeover. If we let them get away with silence, then the frogs are already boiled.”
Vance rightly advised yesterday that we reach out to GOP senators, Congressmen, governors and other elected officials: “Find them at church this morning. Visit offices tomorrow. Demand that they tell you what their views are.”
This is about protecting democracy against an obvious danger. “We have to be willing to stay engaged, even when it’s difficult…Let’s make sure we compile a record of elected officials who gave Trump another pass in December 2022 when the threat was crystal clear and unambiguous; of who went on with their Christmas shopping, as though nothing had happened.”
Democracy may have survived the midterms, but let’s not doubt that its future remains fragile, especially as malignant forces such as Trump and all those who support and emulate him remain dedicated to getting and keeping power, rule of law be damned.
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Why are SEDITIOUS members of Congress still walking the halls of Congress???
Lawyer friends, keep cautioning regarding Garland– “Be patient -be patient” well, sorry, but I’m at the inpatient stage right now -the world is allowing the deranged maniac Putin to rape, torture, murder and destroy babies, children women, girls, men, schools, hospitals -everyone sees the genocide before their eyes, and does nothing.
Close to 150 members of Congress were in on the SEDITIOUS plot with Trump. and the justice department does nothing. We are teaching our young people that if you are rich & white, -you can get by with any -any anything!