Cruz says Trump ‘wrong’ on ‘termination’ of Constitution as Cornyn outright condemns him

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s suggestion that it’s time for “termination” of the U.S. Constitution drew condemnation from many fellow Republicans, including Sen. John Cornyn, but not Sen. Ted Cruz.

“I don’t know why anybody would say something like that, certainly not an ex-president. I think that’s irresponsible,” Cornyn told reporters at the Capitol.

Cruz — a self-proclaimed “constitutional conservative” — initially downplayed Trump’s comments before distancing himself from them while avoiding criticism of Trump himself.

“The Constitution is enduring and it will be for millennia to come,” Cruz told reporters Monday night at the Capitol, ignoring questions about whether Trump was wrong, or whether his remark was disqualifying for a presidential candidate.

Many Republican lawmakers repudiated Trump posting on his Truth Social account that the Constitution could be set aside and he could be declared the “rightful winner” of the 2020 election and reinstalled as president.

By Tuesday afternoon, Cruz went further.

“Of course what he said was wrong, but I also think the media is engaged in a feeding frenzy,” the twice-elected Texan told Nexstar TV. “I’ve never seen reporters so excited as to run up to every Republican and say, ‘Please, please, please attack Donald Trump.’ ”

“Never mind the chaos at our southern border,” he said. “Never mind the servicemen and women who have been wrongfully terminated” for refusing COVID-19 vaccine mandates. “Never mind the crime. Never mind inflation. Never mind gas prices. Just attack Donald Trump. I think the media is a little ridiculous on this.”

Trump has long maintained that he was cheated out of reelection. He repeated that assertion when he launched his 2024 comeback campaign on Nov. 15, though no court or state election official has affirmed the existence of widespread fraud.

“With the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?” Trump said in the post.

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!” he said.

The Constitution has no provision allowing for a do-over election.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, suggested that Trump’s stance would be disqualifying, given the oath presidents are required to take.

“It would be pretty hard to be sworn in to the presidency if you’re not willing to uphold the Constitution,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

As Democrats and legal experts have pointed out, suspending a nation’s constitution or changing the rules after a setback in an election are the tactics of autocrats.

“I think you take an oath to the Constitution, you don’t take it provisionally,” said Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of Senate GOP. “And I can’t imagine that a former president would make that statement.”

Cruz was not alone in avoiding direct criticism of Trump, who remains the de facto leader of the GOP and a potent force with the party’s base.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, who is struggling to cobble together the 218 votes needed to become speaker and can’t afford to alienate the hard-right wing, was likewise restrained. That brought taunts from anti-Trump Rep. Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who lost her leadership post and then her at-large congressional seat for taking on the ex-president after the Jan. 6, 2021, mob attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“No honest person can now deny that Trump is an enemy of the Constitution,” Cheney tweeted after Trump’s post. On Tuesday, she noted that McCarthy declined to condemn Trump for dining last week with a notorious white supremacist. “Are you so utterly without principle that you won’t condemn this either?” she tweeted.

Trump subsequently tried to walk back his embrace of “termination” of the Constitution, calling that reading of his post “DISINFORMATION & LIES” from “the Fake News.”

President Joe Biden collected 81.3 million votes to Trump’s 74.2 million, and defeated Trump in the Electoral College 306-232, although a swing of about 65,000 votes in four battlegrounds — Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — would have reversed the Electoral College outcome.

The White House denounced Trump and his comment — and implicitly castigated anyone who failed to do likewise.

“Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation and should be universally condemned,” said spokesman Andrew Bates, calling the Constitution a “sacrosanct document” and asserting that “you cannot only love America when you win.”

Trump, the 45th president, issued his post after Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, issued a series of tweets disclosing how the company he recently bought had dealt with a controversial New York Post article about Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, during the campaign.

Musk’s lengthy thread Friday evening fueled conservative accusations that the social media giant had tried to protect the future president, though there was no smoking gun among the screenshots showing an internal debate over whether and how to curb the sharing of the article.

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah — one of the seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump at his second impeachment trial on allegations related to the Jan. 6 riot as Congress formalized the 2020 election — said the GOP is “the party of the Constitution,” putting Trump at odds with the party’s fundamental tenets.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, another of the seven, also rejected Trump’s comments.

“Suggesting the termination of the Constitution is not only a betrayal of our Oath of Office, it’s an affront to our Republic,” she tweeted.

Cruz, on Fox News, said Musk’s revelations justify congressional hearings on purported collusion between “big tech” and the Biden campaign and other Democrats to suppress embarrassing information about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop.

“We’ve known for a long time that big tech is censoring conservatives. But what Elon did here is he just laid naked all of the lies the corporate media has told... because it’s clear during the 2020 election, over and over and over again, the Biden campaign and the DNC would reach out to their buddies at Twitter and say, ‘Hey, we don’t like this.’ ”

Bill Kristol, an anti-Trump conservative, blasted Republicans who held back from repudiating the former president.

“Trump has progressed from election denial to Constitution denial,” he tweeted. “Not a surprise, as elections and the peaceful transfer of power are key to the constitutional order. But this clarifies even more, if clarification were needed, how pathetic is the silence of other Republicans.”

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican who’s giving up his seat to become president of the University of Florida, blasted Trump as “a clown... trying to sell tickets to his circus.”

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 GOP leader in the Senate, called Trump’s comments “grist” for other 2024 contenders. “This is certainly an opportunity to create some contrast,” he told reporters on Monday.

The leading GOP alternative to Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has not publicly commented.