Some GOP Lawmakers Denounce Trump’s Call For ‘Termination’ Of Constitution

Topline

Several Republican lawmakers criticized former President Donald Trump on Sunday for suggesting the U.S. should scrap parts of the Constitution and reinstate him as president, the latest round of Trump rebukes as some high-profile Republican figures show growing distaste for the party’s one-time leader.

Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Key Facts

Rep. Mike Turner (Ohio), the leading Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told CBS’ Face The Nation he “vehemently” disagrees with Trump’s false statement on his Truth Social platform Saturday that the “massive fraud” in the 2020 presidential election (an unfounded claim) “allows for the termination” of election rules, “even those found in the Constitution.”

Turner predicted “people certainly are going to take into consideration a statement like this as they evaluate a candidate,” a reference to Trump’s run for president in 2024.

Some of Trump’s more frequent critics also pushed back: Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a staunch Trump critic and vice-chair of the House committee investigating the January 6 riots, tweeted Sunday that “no honest person can now deny that Trump is an enemy of the Constitution,” and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said “not a single conservative can legitimately support him, and not a single supporter can be called a conservative.”

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a one-time Trump supporter who has criticized the former president since his 2020 defeat, argued on ABC’s This Week more Republicans should rebuke Trump’s suggestion: “It should not be hard to say that the 2020 election is over,” he said.

Rep.-elect Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said “I certainly don’t endorse that language or that sentiment” when asked about Trump’s comments on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, adding that Americans “are tired of looking backwards” to the 2020 presidential election.

Key Background

Trump made the comments Saturday after a reporter working with Elon Musk released internal Twitter documents laying out the company’s decision to limit the spread of a New York Post story published just before the 2020 election that detailed the contents of a laptop reportedly owned by President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden. The documents, released through independent journalist Matt Taibbi, offered few new revelations, but showed an inside view of how Twitter officials speculated whether the laptop was part of a Russian hacking scheme and made the decision to suspend the New York Post’s Twitter account under its anti-hacking policy. Trump on Saturday called the files “a really big story about Twitter and various forms of government fraud,” he wrote on Truth Social, while claiming “Big Tech Companies” coordinated with “the DNC, & the Democrat Party” to engage in “MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION.”

Contra

Many Republicans have not yet responded to Trump’s extraordinary suggestion to scrap the Constitution. Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) avoided issuing a firm rebuke in a Sunday interview on ABC’s This Week, telling host George Stephanopoulos that he “will support whoever the Republican nominee is” when asked for his reaction to the comments.

Tangent

Democrats also widely denounced Trump’s proposal to eliminate parts of the Constitution (which Trump did not specify) that purportedly did not work in his favor in the 2020 presidential election. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the incoming House Democratic leader, said in an interview on This Week that the statement was “extraordinary,” but not unexpected. Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) likened Trump to “the crazy uncle . . . saying things which make no sense in America” in an interview on MSNBC’s The Sunday Show. The White House, meanwhile, called attacks on the Constitution an “anathema to the soul of our nation” that “should be universally condemned” in a statement issued Saturday by Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates.

What To Watch For

Some members of the Republican party distanced themselves from Trump following a string of midterm losses among candidates he supported, many of whom helped him deny the results of the 2020 presidential election. His meeting with rapper Kanye West and prominent white supremacist Nick Fuentes at Mar-A-Lago last month further angered conservatives, who issued condemnations of the dinner. Few Republican leaders have said whether they will support Trump in his next presidential bid as other possible contenders, including former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are weighing their own candidacies.