Cheney Rips McCarthy For Accepting Trump Constitutional Attack

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Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who is helping finish up the work of the House riot committee including with a final report during her last weeks in Congress, publicly criticized House GOP leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) this week for staying apparently silent about Trump’s push for suspending the Constitution to further his electoral ambitions.

Trump promoted the idea of doing away at least temporarily with key portions of the document alongside a discussion of either holding a redo of the 2020 presidential election or just installing Donald as president now. It is staggeringly ridiculous for a potential major party pick for president to be talking about possibly undoing the last presidential race and maybe even doing away with the presidential election process altogether, at least for long enough for Trump to retake the White House. “@GOPLeader Last week you wouldn’t condemn Trump for dining with Fuentes & West,” Cheney tweeted, tagging the potentially next Speaker. “This week Trump said we should terminate all rules, regulations etc “even those in the Constitution” to overturn the election. Are you so utterly without principle that you won’t condemn this either?”

Rebukes for Trump pushing to undo the Constitution have been from just the usual suspects — Cheney, Mike Pence, Mitt Romney. Since there remains no evidence of any kind of widespread plot to rig the election in real-world terms, Trump is pushing against what is actually just the basic electoral process in the United States, past and future. If he wins the GOP presidential nod and then is victorious in November, who knows the kind of chaos he could enact? What if he tries to undo electoral rules he doesn’t like but aren’t even under his control via executive order? And what if after that, local officials who are sympathetic to him decide to go along with the sham, no matter any stated concerns about its basic legality? He could also pursue some kind of mass invalidation of actions taken by the Biden admin — again without regard for real-world conclusions about legality. Even if something is challenged up to the Supreme Court and conclusively stopped, what about the chaos of the time before, as it’s perhaps implemented in fits and starts? What if that chaos is unfolding in an election year?