Former President Donald Trump Suggests Suspending the Constitution

By Cruz Marquis

On December 3, the former president took to Truth Social to decry election fraud and suggest termination of “all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

Some things never change. Two years after the 2020 general elections, former President Trump is still on the stump and the internet making voter fraud in said election a cornerstone of his 2024 campaign. While denying the election result is part-and-parcel of post-presidency Trump, what he said on December 3rd was eyebrow raising even by his standards (all capitalizations are Trump’s own):

“So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you 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. Our great “Founders” did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

While this article was being written, the President fired off three more tweets on his private social media platform. First, he denied he wanted to trash the Constitution, then he reiterated that the 2020 election was “STOLEN,” and “steps must be immediately taken to RIGHT THE WRONG.”

Next, Trump dug the hole even deeper in all caps: “SIMPLY PUT, IF AN ELECTION IS IRREFUTABLY FRAUDULENT, IT SHOULD GO TO THE RIGHTFUL WINNER OR, AT A MINIMUM, BE REDONE. WHERE OPEN AND BLATANT FRAUD IS INVOLVED, THERE SHOULD BE NO TIME LIMIT FOR CHANGE!” He finally finished by writing that the US deserves leaders who “LEGITIMATELY” won their election.

Needless to say, for all the faults of the Constitution (it does not go far enough to defend American liberty) it does not deserve to be suspended, in whole or in part. Being the supreme law of the land, all legislation gets its authority such that it has from this document. Article VI, Clause 2 opens: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof…” Undermining the Constitution by consequence undermines all legislation made pursuant to it, creating a free for all where the rules that govern society will become easy to repeal, usurp, and break.

The primacy of written and agreed upon law and legislation is the only thing that keeps society at peace domestically, but this is not the only way to rule. The state, being run according to written and agreed upon rules, and tacitly accepted, but unwritten norms, is what was meant by John Adams when he wrote of “A government of laws, not of men” in the Massachusetts state constitution.  

Alternatively, a leader can rule by the seat of his pants and make things up as he goes along, carelessly disregarding wisdom and precedent. This is branded arbitrary government and preventing this eventuality in the US was a main purpose of the Constitution.

Daniel Webster expounded on the danger of the arbitrary government before the House of Representatives in 1814:

“The tyranny of Arbitrary Government consists as much in its means as in its end; and it would be a ridiculous and absurd constitution which should be less cautious to guard against abuses in the one case than in the other. All the means and instruments which a free Government exercises, as well as the ends and objects which it pursues, are to partake of its own essential character, and to be conformed to its genuine spirit. A free Government with arbitrary means to administer it is a contradiction…” (emphasis added).

No matter what century it is, arbitrary government by men is incompatible with freedom. There can be no mixing of the two, when law is superseded by the capricious will of men, from thence liberty shall flee.

Sadly, Trump isn’t alone in wanting to trash the Constitution, he is joined by the activist vanguard and intellectual class of the left. If there is one nugget of entertainment in this story, it’s watching the authoritarian left defend the Constitution and pretend to hold it sacrosanct for a moment. The entirety of the leftist program with its designs against private property, free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, association, self-defense, etc., is more than sufficient proof that the intellectual vanguard of said movement has little regard for the old principles.

The examples of the leftist disregard for liberty defy quantification, but some recent ones are as follows:

By a 50.7% margin, Oregon voted to strip her citizens of their second amendment rights by banning standard size magazines i.e., anything that holds over ten rounds, requiring permits to buy guns, and banning transfers without background checks.

In my home state of Illinois, Democratic Party tyrants are advancing a bill to ban “assault weapons,” ban standard capacity magazines, and make it impossible for anyone under 21 to purchase a firearm (presumably because the state thinks 17-year-olds can use machine guns to fight and die in its wars overseas, but are too irresponsible to defend themselves with a measly handgun back home).

California is gearing up to give $223,000 to every African American resident to rectify past discrimination, not caring that all money given out like Santa Claus’ presents by the state must come from the citizens. In this way, the state, which was responsible for the discrimination in the first place, writes up a bill for the damages caused by its own conduct, and then presents it to the people of California and ludicrously demands they pay up.

Nationally, President Brandon is embarking on a spending spree Reason is calling “unprecedented,” and without any hyperbole. Until now, President Trump held the record for spending the most tax payer money in a year: $3.28 trillion. Thus far in 2022, President Brandon has spent $3.37 trillion in tax payer money.

Palpable hypocrisy aside, it is uncertain that any of Trump’s meanderings will mean anything in the end, his campaign is taking hard hits just out of the gate. On November 25, Axios reported the former President had dinner with white supremacist and holocaust denier, Nick Fuentes, and rapper, Kanye West, who had since expressed severely antisemitic views. Cavorting with that sort of scum is not helpful for Trump’s re-election bid, nor is suggesting the Constitution or parts of it should be suspended.

As of the time of this article’s writing, I have no intention of voting for Trump in the primaries or the general election because of his toxic baggage (Exhibit A from the past week: Dining with Fuentes and West) (Exhibit B from the past week: Suggesting the Constitution be suspended), and his terrible bungling of the Covid pandemic, which enabled a wholesale destruction of American liberty. Conservatives and libertarians will have to reckon with these facts before voting for him, and it’s not at all certain the former president will like their choice.

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