Donald Trump sees the constitution
the way he sees other human beings:
He sees it as just an instrument for his use and convenience
when it serves his ends.
The real danger of what Trump is doing with rhetoric that is so extreme,
as to be calling for the termination of the Constitution or a redo on the 2020 election,
is that as he goes to further and further extremes,
other individuals out there, who are actually extreme,
start to look moderate by comparison.
There's a phrase politically called the Overton Window,
and the idea is that, if President Trump can shift the discourse
so far beyond the boundaries of what we used to consider
normal, rational thought,
that other extremists will be able to step in
and appear to be less extreme, more moderate,
when in fact, their policies, by any pre-Donald Trump metric,
would've been measured as extreme in American politics.
The danger here is that
to the point where we don't really have any idea
what moderate, rational statesmanship and stateswomanship is in America right now.
The fanning of the flames with regard to
questioning the legitimacy of results,
even when the facts don't support the questioning,
is an undermining of our national core identity.
It's an undermining of our faith in our country,
it's an undermining of our faith in the process,
and it's an undermining of everything that we purport to be
when we try and describe ourselves to the rest of the world.
The Constitution is both sacred and flawed.
It is not a perfect document.
It was not drafted by perfect men.
The flaws in our founders
are as much a part of an honest assessment of Americana
The Constitution, however, is a living document
in the sense both that it's meaning can change over time
as context and society develop,
and the Constitution can change through formal processes
of amending the Constitution.
Reasonable people of different political persuasions
can and do disagree
about interpreting the Constitution within a set of parameters,
would argue that the Constitution can simply be terminated
The silence of the Republican Party has been deafening.
There are a few isolated individuals in the Republican party who've spoken up,
but where is Kevin McCarthy?
Where is Mitch McConnell?
Does Jim Jordan have any principles whatsoever?
Where's Ted Cruz?
This is a party that has wrapped itself in the American flag
over and over again.
This is a party that constantly talks with a near religious reverence
for the very-flawed﻿ Founding Fathers.
I was one of many, I confess,
who thought, in the aftermath of January 6th,
that Donald Trump was over, politically speaking,
that the moderates in the Republican party would stand up to him,
would stand up for the rule of law,
and would value country over party.
A few of them did, and they suffered the consequences.
Because so few of them did, we are now suffering the consequences.
In a sense, we're suffering the consequences
of Donald Trump getting away with the litany of things
that he's gotten away with consequence-free.
Whether it's Russian election interference,
whether it's having Ukraine do a domestic political errand at his request
and jeopardizing the security of a significant ally,
whether it's the emoluments clause, or the documents at Mar-a-Lago,
or January 6th, and now calling for termination of the Constitution,
or simple things like tax fraud.
The idea that there have been no meaningful consequences
imposed on this individual
is basically rolling the red carpet out
for future transgression.