Former President Donald Trump called for an end to the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election and restore him to office on Saturday, continuing his electoral denial and promotion of fringe conspiracy theories.
“Do you THROW OUT the 2020 Presidential Election Results and declare a RIGHTFUL WINNER or have a NEW ELECTION? 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 a post on the Truth Social social network and accused “Big Tech” of working closely with Democrats. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False and Fraudulent Elections!”
Trump’s post came after Twitter released internal emails showing discussion in 2020 about a New York Post story about material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said on Saturday that Trump’s remarks were “anathema to the soul of our nation and must be universally condemned.”
“You can’t only love America when you’re winning,” Bates said in a statement. “The US Constitution is a sacred document that for more than 200 years has guaranteed the prevalence of liberty and the rule of law in our great country. The Constitution brings the American people together – regardless of party – and elected leaders swear to uphold it. It is the ultimate monument to all Americans who gave their lives to defeat self-serving despots who abused their power and trampled on fundamental rights.”
Employees on Twitter’s legal, policy and communications teams debated – and at times disagreed – over whether to restrict the article in accordance with the company’s policy on infringing material. The debate took place weeks before the 2020 election, when Joe Biden, Hunter Biden’s father, was running against then-President Trump.
Trump announced his third presidential bid last month and is still widely regarded as the leader of the Republican Party. Party leaders had hoped the former president would drop his election denial rhetoric after the innocuous results in the midterms.
Earlier this week, Trump expressed his support for the rioters behind the deadly January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, saying in a video played during a fundraiser that “people have been treated unconstitutionally in my opinion and very , very unfairly, and we’ll get to the end’.
In an interview in September, Trump said he was “financially supporting” some of the Jan. 6 defendants and promised to issue pardons and government apologies to those prosecuted if re-elected.
He also came under fire for having dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort with well-known white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and rapper Kanye West, who recently made a series of anti-Semitic comments.
