What Good Is a Constitutional Amendment If You Don’t Use It?
Way before Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, President Trump sowed the seeds for a rigged election should he be defeated. In his tweets and interviews, he attempted to discredit the election process. Mail-in balloting was ripe for fraud, he said, even though this practice has been in use since the Civil War (and Trump has mailed in his ballots for years). As he often has done throughout his presidency, he admitted what he was really thinking when he said, making it easier to vote would insure “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” He was setting the stage for his objections should Biden defeat him.
After losing by 7 million votes and by a margin of 74 Electoral College votes to Biden, the president and his personal lawyers filed and lost or withdrew over 50 voter fraud lawsuits in the five battleground states and the Supreme Court to overturn the election. He lost every case but one. As his path narrowed, he’s become more desperate. After multiple recounts and court challenges, each state’s vote was certified and on December 14, electors once again reminded Donald Trump he had lost. After four years, Trump’s “alternative facts” finally met their match. But it wasn’t without an uncertainty that has divided the country. Despite his loss, we are still hostages to his rhetoric.
The president has his ardent followers both in and out of office. Pro-Trump supporters marched in Washington chanting “Stop the Steal.” Trump conducted an ongoing propaganda war on Twitter, claiming (without evidence) there were massive vote dumps and rigged voting machines. He even attacked his Justice Department and the FBI: “The FBI and Department of Justice — I don’t know, maybe they are involved,” Trump said. “But how people are allowed to get away … with this stuff is unbelievable.”
While this was happening, the president was numero rerum, missing in action, from his critical presidential duties: dealing with the pandemic, the economy, and unemployment. As Americans celebrated Christmas at a distance, he played golf. The Russians hacked into critical government data systems, including those at the Pentagon and Homeland Security, and the COVID-19 death count surpassed 300,000 Americans. Trump’s only focus since November 6 has been to overturn the election.
As things look dire for the President’s efforts, he is turning on his own, those in the Republican Party who are brave enough to put the country ahead of their party and leader, by refusing to take part in his sedition. He fired Republican Chris Krebs, head of the country’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, after Krebs stated the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history.” He berated GOP Georgia governor, Brian Kemp and his Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, after they supported the will of Georgia voters. And now he’s blasting Vice President Pence, after a Lincoln Project ad claimed Pence was backing away from Trump’s “last stand,” the January 6 Congressional approval of each state’s certified electoral votes.
As some of Trump’s party allies are backing away from this farce (even Attorney General Bill Barr is jumping ship and resigning after stating there is no cause for a special prosecutor to investigate voter fraud), the president is turning to conspiracy advocates for support. As The Washington Post wrote, “Trump’s unofficial election advisory council now includes a pardoned felon, adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a White House trade adviser and a Russian agent’s former lover.” Pardoned felon, Michael Flynn, has suggested Trump declare martial law to rerun the election. Former federal prosecutor and attorney for Flynn, Sidney Powell, has said Venezuela is behind hacking of voting machines. Her secret “intelligent contractor” witness, pro-Trump podcaster Terpsichore Maras-Lindeman, has a questionable past. Former Overstock chief executive and conspiracy theory adherent, Patrick Byrne, along with Flynn, Powell, and Republicans from the House Freedom Caucus, including QAnon supporter Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), are now the president’s closest advisors. Considering Trump seems hellbent on slashing and burning the federal government on his way out, this is alarming.
This isn’t the first time America has found itself on this precipice. The elasticity of the Constitution and rule of law have been tested before. In the 1950s, Joseph McCarthy’s rhetoric and communist witch hunt mirrored Trump’s autocratic behavior in many ways. On June 1, 1950, Maine’s Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith was one of the first to stand up to McCarthy’s tyranny when she delivered a speech before Congress: Declaration of Conscience. Smith was the first woman to hold office as both a Congressperson and a Senator and the first women to be put forward by any party for President. Like today, the Senator spoke of the wretched air of “fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear” that hung over the country.
At the time, she believe the Democrats in power had “lost the confidence of the American people by its complacency to the threat of communism here at home and the leak of vital secrets to Russia.” And she believed a Republican victory would restore the country’s focus and place on the world stage. However, she said, “Yet to displace [the Democrats] with a Republican regime embracing a philosophy that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to this nation…. I don’t believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans aren’t that desperate for victory.”
Unfortunately, the GOP in 2020 doesn’t seem as concerned with our national interest, only their party’s hold on power and politicians personal interests. After Joe Biden was declared the President-Elect, Trump refused to concede. Many senators and congresspeople, not only refused to acknowledge the will of the people, our most important and cherished right to vote, but they supported Trump’s false claims of a rigged election.
Margaret Chase Smith embodied the true nature of public service. She believed in the tenets of her party, but not without acknowledging they had gone astray. “Those of us,” she said, “who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism: The right to criticize; the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; [and] the right of independent thought.”
As Peter Whener, contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote:
Given Trump’s psychological profile, it was inevitable that when he felt the walls of reality close in on him — in 2020, it was the pandemic, the cratering economy, and his election defeat — he would detach himself even further from reality. It was predictable that the president would assert even more bizarre conspiracy theories. That he would become more enraged and embittered, more desperate and despondent, more consumed by his grievances. That he would go against past supplicants, like Attorney General Bill Barr and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and become more aggressive toward his perceived enemies. That his wits would begin to turn, in the words of King Lear. That he would begin to lose his mind.
Donald Trump may have less than 30 days left in office, but he has and can do a lot more damage to the country’s institutions and its people. Within a week, he pardoned 60 convicted criminals who are the president’s close associates and loyalists. His clear message: he will reward loyalty when he’s at the center of questionable or illegal behavior. Over the last four years, Trump has shown he was never our president. He was always their president.
It’s time to consider invoking the 25th Amendment’s Section 4, which allows for removal of a president who is incapacitated by any kind of illness — including mental illness — or injury. The Constitution has always stated the Vice President would become Acting President should the President die, resign, or become unable to carry out his or her duties. However, it never stated who may make that evaluation. The 25th Amendment, ratified in 1967, makes that clear.
We have never had a president like Donald Trump, and clearer heads should come forward to insure the safety of the country, its people, and its institutions. In continuing his efforts to undermine the legitimacy of our election, the President and his supporters, both in and out of government, are partaking in sedition. This has critical ramifications both in the next month and into the next administration. Who in the Republican Party will now stand up for the pillars of the country Senator Smith laid out because it’s the right thing to do and the future of the country depends on it?
What good is a constitutional amendment if you don’t use it when necessary? Oh, and voter fraud? Why yes, there was voter fraud in the 2020 election. By a Republican.
This poster is part of a series of posters about the sorry state of American political discourse. Jeff Gates does these under the guise of the Chamomile Tea Party. This poster is part of a group of images he’s been doing since the beginning of 2020 about the election, the pandemic, and social justice. Download a high resolution copy of this poster for free. In fact, all Chamomile Tea Party posters are free to download under a Creative Commons license.
Follow the history of our country’s political intransigence from 2010–2020 through a seven-part exhibit of these posters on Google Arts & Culture.
