The editorial board at The Wall Street Journal, which is under the Murdochs’ News Corp, joined those criticizing former President Trump this week after he recently pushed the idea of suspending electoral roles in the Constitution that might impede his hopes of returning to the presidency before 2024, either through declaring him the winner of or redoing the 2020 election.
Trump once again raised the idea of retaking the White House independently of the next election amid renewed scrutiny on the Right of Twitter’s temporary decision prior to the 2020 elections to limit the spread of certain reporting on Hunter Biden, a son of the current president. The reporting was still easily available outside of the platform, and it was still highly publicized, suggesting the limited restrictions weren’t even particularly effective at shutting down the spread of the info. Trump has also previously singled out alleged collusion between the FBI and Facebook in efforts to limit the spread of the story, which if allowed to circulate more freely wouldn’t have somehow magically swung the election. In reality, there is no apparent evidence the FBI provided either specific warnings or directives to the social media company about the Hunter Biden reporting: only more general missives about potential foreign interference operations.
Donald also pressed a Wisconsin state legislative leader for the undoing of that state’s 2020 results after a state court ruling restricting the usage of drop boxes for mail-in ballots. “The Constitution contains no provision for mulligan presidential elections, so what Mr. Trump is talking about is impossible under the parchment written by the Founders,” the Journal noted. Going against the Constitution because it’s a day that ends in “y” and doing so because of supposed corruption — with a plan in mind — have the same net effect.
“For years, Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed was the gift that kept on giving—to Democrats,” the editorial board at the Journal also observed. “Now his Truth Social account is playing the same role, giving the media a way to turn unfavorable stories back to Mr. Trump’s outburst du jour. Last week Elon Musk divulged new information about Twitter’s 2020 censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story in the New York Post. Republicans should be on offense this week. Instead they are facing hostile questions about Mr. Trump’s Terminator fantasy and whether they will support him in 2024.” Candidates aligned with what the Journal nicknamed Trump’s fantasy of terminating parts of the Constitution that limit his political ambitions lost in states nationwide in the recently concluded midterms. More broadly, the publication also noted how questions about the conduct of social media companies don’t make Trump’s loss actually the result of fraud after all.
“Mr. Trump is giving Republicans a taste of what they’re in for if they nominate him again in 2024,” the Journal’s editors observed. “His presidential campaign is less than a month old. Already Mr. Trump has dined with anti-Semites and a white nationalist, while calling for himself to be reinstated as President, even if this requires the “termination” of whatever in the Constitution stands in the way. What he’ll really terminate is the GOP.”
