An easy question for Republican leaders: Aren’t you sick of being scared of whatever idiocy Donald Trump is going to drag you into next?
Of course you are. So now comes his next outrage: He called for the “termination” of the U.S. Constitution this weekend — the latest embarrassing temper tantrum in his two-year clown show after losing the 2020 election by more than 7 million votes.
So here’s a second easy question: Why on Earth aren’t you coming together as a party and taking the chance to formally renounce this historic loser once and for all?
The single-term president hasn’t been in a weaker position since Rupert Murdoch decided to put the full force of the Fox News machine behind his campaign in 2016. There’s no denying the rerun stinks this time around. Trump’s low-energy announcement of his 2024 bid to return to the White House last month saw attendees bolting for the doors before it was over. He’s still furiously backpedaling after hosting vicious antisemites Kanye West and Nick “I’m just like Hitler” Fuentes in his Mar-a-Lago dining room just days ago.
The next election is two years away. The Republican Party will never have a better chance, or more time, to rehab and forge a new face of what it has to offer to the American public.
Trump’s decisive 2020 loss and the U.S. Capitol insurrection he fomented because of it are far from the only bits of evidence that he’s nothing but a drag on his party — and a continuing threat to the nation. He’s the reason the GOP radically underperformed in last month’s midterms. His continuing flirtations with Nazis, white supremacists and other un-American bigots will continue to repulse the level-headed voters Republicans need to rebuild their party. His legal woes — from the Georgia grand jury investigation of his interference in the 2020 election, to the New York probe of his company’s shady business dealings, to the Department of Justice’s inquiry into his involvement with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot — are only going to heat up in the coming months.
Sure, Josh Hawley, your Senate campaign’s Facebook page still shows you beaming as you embrace the two-time popular vote flop. And yes, Jerry Moran, you can probably credit Trump’s endorsement for scaring off a primary challenger in your bid for reelection this year. Roger Marshall echoed the ex-president’s anti-science musings on the COVID-19 pandemic during his 2018 campaign and made it to the Senate. And Sen.-elect Eric Schmitt is all in on the fiction of building a functioning border wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.
But can’t we all agree that if we chuck the Constitution, we won’t have a United States any longer? How many more ways will Republicans let the man who famously hugged every American flag he came across continue to trash the cherished institutions of the country he claims to love more than any other person alive?
We realize GOP politicians are backed into something of a corner. Most of the Republicans who voted to convict Trump in his second well-earned impeachment didn’t make it out of their primaries. His hold over the most devoted of their base is still strong.
Yet even Elon Musk — the South African billionaire and social media magnate with a shaky understanding of the First Amendment — gets that Trump’s latest hissy fit is beyond the pale: “The Constitution is greater than any president,” he tweeted Sunday night. “End of story.”
So, come on, Republicans. It’s time for you, Fox News and the rest of the conservative cinematic universe to unite and take down the cruel, mercurial Big Bad who’s been holding you all hostage for more than six years now. You have the power. You’re the ones who wrote this tale. Put Musk’s words into action: End Donald Trump’s political story once and for all.
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