With call to terminate Constitution, Trump drives bulldozer into guard rail of U.S. law

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Just when it seemed he had breached all the barriers in conventional American politics, Donald Trump just shattered another one.

As a 2016 presidential candidate and during his time in the White House, Mr. Trump often was seen as a bull in the china shop of American civic life. But with his recently expressed view that the Constitution should be suspended to permit the overturning of the 2020 election, which he lost, he has driven a bulldozer into the principal guard rail of American law.

“This is a five-alarm fire when it comes to all the protections and provisions of the American Constitution,” said Daniel Urman, a constitutional scholar at Northeastern University. “There are lots of counter-examples to this – presidents who made extraordinary efforts to preserve the Constitution – but no example remotely like this to shred the Constitution.”

Mr. Trump made his remarks Saturday in a post on the network, Truth Social – which is his preferred method of communication in his post-presidency period.

“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?” he wrote. “Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

Mr. Trump’s comments prompted a combination of antipathy and astonishment among constitutional scholars and Democrats. White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said the former president’s remarks were “anathema to the soul of our nation, and should be universally condemned.”

Like the 43 presidents who preceded him in office, Mr. Trump took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Though some predecessors have been accused of traducing the Constitution – that was at the heart of the effort to impeach Richard Nixon in 1974 – no sitting or former chief executive has ever called for overturning it. Modern presidents have complained about the restrictions upon their actions in the Constitution, but obeyed its commands.

Sixteen years after leaving the White House, John Tyler joined the Confederacy in the Civil War and was elected to its House of Representatives. But he did not advocate the overturning of the American Constitution.

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Mr. Trump, in calling for the rescinding of the document written in 1787, cited the perspectives of those who fought the American Revolution and replaced the fragile post-war Articles of Confederation with the Constitution: “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

Five years before he became president, Abraham Lincoln set forth his reverence for the country’s founding document: “Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution,” he said. “That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”

Even so, Lincoln, citing the Constitutional provision that the “privilege of the writ of habeas corpus” may be suspended in “cases of rebellion or invasion” did indeed suspend habeas corpus during the Civil War. Many of his contemporaries, some later scholars and the Supreme Court of his own time all believed that he should have sought congressional approval for his actions. After the arrest and holding of thousands of political opponents, Lincoln ignored the court’s ruling that his suspension was unlawful.

As for Mr. Trump, his remarks came in an unusually tumultuous week in his post-presidential life.

First a Supreme Court decision denied Mr. Trump’s effort to keep his income-tax returns from a House of Representatives committee. Then a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the appointment of the special master whom Mr. Trump wanted to examine the documents found in his Mar-a-Lago home. All week, the former president found himself in the position of being an unwelcome presence in the Senate campaign of NFL star Herschel Walker, a Trump political protege, to win a critical runoff election in Georgia, scheduled for Tuesday. He also faced a firestorm of criticism for his dinner with Ye, the rapper once known as Kanye West, and Nick Fuentes, an avowed white supremacist.

In the wake of the poor performance of midterm congressional election candidates supported by Mr. Trump, several members of his inner circle – including former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, former vice president Mike Pence and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo – along with high-profile sitting and former governors Chris Sununu, Chris Christie and Larry Hogan indicated that his 2024 presidential ambitions would not keep them from mounting White House campaigns of their own.

In his statement condemning Mr. Trump’s views on the Constitution, Mr. Bates, the White House spokesperson, said: “You cannot only love America when you win.”

“The American Constitution is a sacrosanct document that for over 200 years has guaranteed that freedom and the rule of law prevail in our great country. The Constitution brings the American people together – regardless of party – and elected leaders swear to uphold it. It’s the ultimate monument to all of the Americans who have given their lives to defeat self-serving despots that abused their power and trampled on fundamental rights.”

Harry Truman was one president whose reverence for the Constitution restrained his actions, though reluctantly.

When the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that he lacked the constitutional authority to seize the nation’s steel mills, Truman swiftly quickly returned the mills to the control of the steel manufacturers. Shortly thereafter, justice Hugo Black, who wrote the opinion, invited the president to his home in Alexandria, Va., for bourbon and a barbecue.

“I don’t much care for your law,” Truman told his host, “but, by golly, this bourbon is good.”