By Brigitte L. Nacos
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that former president Donald Trump used his social media platform last weekend to call for the suspension of the U.S. Constitution. He wants to scrap laws and constitutional articles that are the foundation of our democratic system because he still claims falsely that the 2020 presidential election was rigged in favor of the winning candidate.
Obviously, he does not want to wait for voters to decide in November 2024 but rather tries to sell the idea of a second coup to his hardcore supporters. Many of them, most of all the QAnon conspiracists, believe all along that he must and will return to power well before the next elections.
Although Mike Pence, the former vice-president, and Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the US Senate, had a few critical words for Trump’s attack on constitutional democracy, the bulk of GOP officials responded once again by remaining silent.
A shocking silence and proof that the power-hungry master of Mar-a-Lago continues to hold his grip on the GOP, if only, because the GOP’s elected officials fear the influence of the MAGA movement in their party’s primaries.
By now it is crystal clear: For the GOP, Trump cannot go too far with even the most extremist words and actions that were unthinkable for presidents or ex-presidents until this performance artist moved into the political arena.
Trump does not hide his hostility to democracy and his preference for strong-man rule. He publicizes his outrageous ideas and acts on them.
More recently, he displayed his preference of far-right extremism in several cases.
- He does not make a secret of his support for the organized terrorists and MAGA insurrectionists who supported his coup attempt on January 6, 2021 (1/6) by an unprecedented violent attack on the US Capitol. And he has promised the convicted 1/6 participants pardons once he returns to power. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, a Trump disciple, plans GOP hearings into the Department of Justice’s “unfair” treatment of violent 1/6 offenders once her party takes over in the U.S. House of Representatives.
- He hosted the White Supremacist, neo-Nazi, and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and the anti-Semite Kanye West for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. If that was not a clear message of support to far-right extremists, among them violent ones, what would be? While Trump signaled his support for these elements among his supporters before, his get-together will Fuentes and West was an overt embrace and brought Trump a blast of the media attention he seeks.
Last week, the leader of the violent anti-government militia Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, was found guilty of a very serious crime for his role in the 1/6 breach of the US Capitol: seditious conspiracy.
What is seditious conspiracy? In the US, this crime is codified in 18 U.S. Code § 2384 and explained this way:
- “If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
From all we know, including the compelling hearings of the US House Select Committee on January 6, 2021, the 45. US President and a conspiratorial clique around him did “conspire to overthrow…by force the government of the United States…” that day to keep Trump in office and deny Biden to become the lawfully elected 46. US president.
Now it depends on the Department of Justice to show that everyone is treated equally under the law.
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