It probably was as offhand a remark as he’ll ever make, but when Trump screeched about reinstating his presidency by suspending the Constitution, he ignited a forest fire.
Alice Stewart, a conservative commentator and former GOP staffer, sneered, “I hate to inform [him], the Constitution is not like a spouse. You can’t just get rid of it when it no longer suits your purposes.” (Story here.)
David Strom, a GOP speechwriter, thinks Trump finally committed “political suicide.” (Story here.)
Margaret Brennan, host of the CBS show “Face the Nation,” shredded a GOP congressman for dodging the issue (story here).
A Biden spokesman snarled, “Attacking the constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation and should be universally condemned” (story here). (Yeah, but it’s not like he ever respected it; GOP voters elected him president anyway.)
Nearly every major news outlet ran stories, including New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News, ABC News, BBC News, The Guardian, The Hill, even Fox News, along with magazines like Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and Mother Jones. Everybody is talking about it!
Will it sink Trump’s fledgling 2024 campaign? There’s a historical precedent for that possibility. In 2004, Howard Dean, the early Democratic frontrunner, sank his campaign in 2.5 seconds with one ill-considered screech (watch it in the video below) that became known as “the Dean scream.” Trump has made countless ill-considered screeches; maybe this time it’ll be one too many. Only time can tell.
Update (12/14/22): A Quinnipiac poll taken a few days later showed 86% of Democrats, 52% of independents, but only 17% of Republicans thought Trump’s remark about “eliminating” the constitution should disqualify him from public office (see story here), which shows toxic voters remain the GOP’s biggest problem.