 The former president and current 2024 contender Donald Trump is openly calling for the Constitution to be terminated so he can be installed as the rightful winner of the 2020 election. Now at this point in time, none of us are shocked that Trump said another kooky thing, but even if we're all accustomed to it at this point, we need to take very seriously the reality that the former president is gradually moving towards more open authoritarianism. And this person could win in 2024. So what is he saying this time and why is he saying it? First let's get to the post that he made via TruthSocial where he says so with the revelation of massive and widespread fraud and deception in working closely with big tech companies, the DNC and the Democratic Party, do you throw the presidential election results of 2020 out and declare the rightful winner or do you have a new election? A massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution, wow, our great founders did not want and would not condone false and fraudulent elections. So he is effectively calling for the Constitution to be suspended so he can become the president again since he was wronged and had he not been wronged, well he would have won, therefore he's the rightful winner. Now what is he up in arms about? Well it is the Twittergate story where Elon Musk shared Twitter files with journalist and transphobe defender Matt Taibbi and he basically details how in a very lengthy thread, Twitter at the time made the decision to censor the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story. The Verge explains the emails show Twitter's team struggling with how to explain their handling of the New York Post story that broke the news of Hunter's leaked laptop files and whether they made the correct moderation decision in the first place. At the time it was not clear if the materials were genuine and Twitter decided to ban links to or images of the post story citing its policy on the distribution of hacked materials. The move was controversial even then primarily among Republicans but also with speech advocates worried about Twitter's decision to block a news outlet. While Musk might be hoping we see documents showing Twitter's largely former staffers nefariously deciding to act in a way that helped now President Joe Biden, the communications mostly show a team debating how to finalize and communicate a difficult moderation decision. So that right there is why Trump is saying that we should suspend the Constitution or terminate rather the Constitution so he can be installed as president. Now for the record I think that it was wrong for Twitter to censor the story but Musk is claiming that this was a First Amendment violation but even Taibbi who defends Republicans says that he saw no evidence of government involvement in the laptop story but generally he claims that the Trump White House and Biden campaign made moderation requests to Twitter that was honored although he contends that Twitter honored more requests from Democrats. And yes Biden's team did indeed report the Hunter Biden posts but that doesn't prove this grand collusion conspiracy which is what Donald Trump and his supporters are trying to push. So he's actually arguing that in the event Twitter didn't censor the story then the Hunter Biden laptop story published by the New York Post would have been so powerful that everyone would have ended up voting for Trump instead of Biden. It's a bit of a stretch don't you think Trump? I mean first of all I don't care at all about the Hunter Biden laptop story was Hunter Biden partying with sex workers and doing drugs yes but that doesn't weigh on my decision to vote for his father just as Trump Jr allegedly doing a lot of cocaine and looking like his heart is about to explode on videos wouldn't influence my decision to not vote for Donald Trump. I look at the candidates not necessarily their children so it's absurd to think that this story was the catalyst for Trump's defeat when in 2020 he mishandled a global pandemic and threatened to bring the military against Black Lives Matter protesters. There's a plethora of reasons why Trump lost but certainly censoring this story on Twitter was not one of them even if you can admit that the censoring of the story was bad and it seems like a lot of staffers at Twitter were really apprehensive about making this decision but because of that Trump says let's terminate the Constitution so I can be reinstalled. I mean he's grasping at straws here. Now after people rightfully reacted without rage to that well he started to walk it back and claim actually I never said that the Constitution should be terminated. Quote the fake news is actually trying to convince the American people that I said I wanted to terminate the Constitution this is simply more disinformation and lies like the Russia Russia Russia and all of their hoaxes and scams. Trump wrote Monday afternoon saying he meant that steps must be immediately taken to right the wrong. In a separate all-capitalized post Trump wrote that if an election is irrefutably fraudulent it should go to the rightful winner or at a minimum be redone where open and blatant fraud is involved there should be no time limit for change. So despite his attempt to walk that back effectively you are still calling for the Constitution to be terminated because you don't get to just claim that the election was stolen and have that be the justification for a new election or the election to be redone or you to be declared the rightful winner that's still not constitutional so you're still calling for the Constitution to be terminated. Donald Trump or at a minimum suspended which is a problem. So I again I want to just stress that I get that people are sick and tired of Donald Trump and they all have Trump fatigue and they expect him to say really ridiculous things like this but we shouldn't downplay the gravity of this statement despite it coming from Donald Trump. This is a former president calling for the Constitution to be terminated and that is genuinely unhinged it's explicitly authoritarian but again at this point in time it's not necessarily shocking for Donald Trump but despite our lack of surprise here we shouldn't just let this stand we should push back against this and educate people that if they support Donald Trump they are supporting a dictator they're supporting somebody who is openly an authoritarian who has called for authoritarianism that is something that is horrifying because even if they support Donald Trump now well if he were a dictator now I'm not saying that that's going to be the case but in the event he were a dictator then once you permit that person to have authority then they can just keep that power forever you can't take that back you can't put the cat back in the bag so having a promo president which is what he wants to be eventually they're gonna disagree with him he's gonna do something that they don't like and I get that it's a cult but at some point they're not gonna agree with him for example they're all anti-vaxxers he was pro-vaccine because he wants credit for it so what happens after you give this man the power to remain in office indefinitely and then he does something that you disagree with at that point in time you've given away consent to elect leaders so people need to understand across the aisle that by supporting this person you're supporting an end to US democracy and perhaps he might not be the one that pulls the trigger and ultimately kills democracy but if you enable this and normalize this you are allowing for someone down the line to do what he wasn't able to accomplish and so we all at a minimum need to acknowledge that even if we disagree we at least maintain the ability to make the decision about who is and isn't in power by supporting Donald Trump you are tacitly accepting a dictatorship you're tacitly accepting the end to US democracy so we've got to make that clear to people who support Trump because this is not okay this is undemocratic and to support him means you are supporting somebody who wants to end democracy and by default you support the end to democracy as well so do not support Donald Trump convince people of this and let them know that they cannot support authoritarianism that will not be tolerated in a democratic society as weak as our democracy may be. 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