Trump Urges 2020 Election Do-Over in Bizarre Broadside Against Constitution

Republicans have remained largely silent about Mr. Trump’s comments, instead focusing their criticism on the news that set the former president off in the first place — that Twitter censored a story about the contents of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden.

AP/Charlie Neibergall
President Trump at a rally, November 3, 2022, at Sioux City, Iowa. AP/Charlie Neibergall

President Trump, still angry about losing the 2020 election, has suggested that the Constitution be jettisoned and a new election be held following revelations that employees of Twitter suppressed negative stories about President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, in the weeks before the 2020 vote.

In an early morning post to his Truth Social platform Saturday, the former president claimed that the disclosures are proof of collusion between what he called “Big Tech” and his political opponents, and suggested that the results of the last election be thrown out and either he be declared the actual winner or that a new election be held.

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Mr. Trump said. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

The comments from Mr. Trump, who announced two weeks ago that he is running for the GOP’s presidential nomination again in 2024, drew immediate rebukes from Democrats on Capitol Hill and beyond, who called it further evidence of Mr. Trump’s anti-Democratic tendencies. Even the White House felt compelled to respond to Mr. Trump’s diatribe.

Calling the Constitution a “sacrosanct document,” Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said “attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation, and should be universally condemned. You cannot only love America when you win.”

Republicans, however, have remained largely silent about Mr. Trump’s comments, instead focusing their criticism on the news that set Mr. Trump off in the first place — that Twitter censored a New York Post story about the contents of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden three weeks before the 2020 election.

There is no provision of the Constitution, apart from the amendment procedures, that allows “termination” of any of its provisions. 

Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, last week promised to release a trove of documents about the company’s decision to suppress the Post reporting in October of 2020, and Friday night the first installment of what he called the “Twitter Files” were reported by the independent journalist Matt Taibbi.

In a series of social media posts, Mr. Taibbi sought to demonstrate — using contemporaneous emails and other internal communications among Twitter employees —  how the company justified suppressing the Post’s scoop on the grounds that the material might have been hacked or stolen from Hunter Biden. The Post later disclosed that it obtained the material from the owner of a computer repair business in Delaware where Hunter Biden had abandoned the laptop.

“The ‘Twitter Files’ tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms,” Mr. Taibbi said. “It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out [of] the control of its designer.”

The “files” show that employees at Twitter were  in regular contact with officials from the Trump White House, the Democratic National Committee, and then-candidate Biden’s “team” who regularly asked the platform to remove specific content. Such content moderation efforts were heavily weighted in favor of Democratic operatives who had better personal contacts within the Twitter organization, Mr. Taibbi reported.

The decision to censor the Post’s story came after considerable internal deliberation at Twitter, according to Mr. Taibbi, but without the knowledge of the company’s CEO at the time, Jack Dorsey. “They just freelanced it,” is how one former employee characterized the decision to Mr. Taibbi. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”

Once it was made, however, “Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be ‘unsafe.’ They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography,” Mr. Taibbi reported.

Twitter reversed its decision to block the Post material two days later following an avalanche of criticism from Republican politicians and conservative commentators accusing the company of bias.

Mr. Musk has promised more revelations about Twitter’s content moderation before his purchase of the company was completed in late October in the coming days, but has given no hint as to what the further revelations might include.

Following Friday night’s report, the leader of Republicans in the House, Kevin McCarthy, promised further investigations into the matter when the GOP takes control of the lower chamber in January. “In 32 days, the new House Republican majority will get answers for the American people and the accountability they deserve,” he said on Twitter.


The New York Sun

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