Trump Would Cancel Elections

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump told a crowd, “Get out and vote! Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore! Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.”

Chilling words, those. But did he mean them? It seems he did. He also said he would be “a dictator on Day One” and that he might have to “suspend the Constitution.”

But then, on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, He took this oath:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm )
that I will faithfully execute
the Office of President of the United States,
and will to the best of my ability,
preserve, protect and defend
the Constitution of the United States.”

Asked a few days ago if he thought the president must obey the Constitution, he replied, “I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.”

And now he’s talking about how he could serve a third term, despite what the Constitution says.

Of course he knows he’s violating, and plans to violate, the Constitution. He knows, he just doesn’t care. As the author/political commentator Robert Hubbell wrote recently, Trump has violated the Constitution hundreds of times since he took office. Hubbell did not describe each violation, but rather he noted 11 principles the Constitution prohibits presidents from doing, but Trump is openly doing them anyway:

• Withholding funds appropriated by Congress.
• Closing or suspending the work of agencies, departments or programs that Congress established.
• Violating laws enacted by Congress to protect civil servants from arbitrary or politically motivated terminations.
• Punishing private institutions based on their political speech (such as law firms, universities and broadcast networks).
• Violating court orders. (The Kilmar Abrego Garcia case is only one example, but it says a lot. In a unanimous vote, the Supreme Court ordered Trump on April 15 to bring Garcia home, and he still hasn’t done it.)
• Ordering politically motivated investigations and prosecutions by the DOJ, FBI, IRS, FTC, and others.
• Deporting immigrants, and in some cases even American citizens, denying them the due process guaranteed them by the Fifth Amendment.
• Denying due process to migrants and citizens alike.
• Denying the writ of habeas corpus to migrants and citizens alike.
• Imposing illegal tariffs without congressional oversight or review.
• Repudiating obligations assumed by international treaties.
• Invoking the Alien Enemies Act despite the absence of a war or invasion, thereby usurping Congress’s authority to declare war.

Plainly, Trump doesn’t care about upholding the Constitution, just as he doesn’t care what voters think about him. He promised to bring consumer prices down; he’s driving them up. He promised to protect our democracy; he’s destroying it. He promised to help small businesses; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says his tariffs are costing them $9,000 a second, or, annualized, nearly $284 billion a year. Large and small investors on Wall Street don’t know whether he is pushing us toward inflation, deflation, recession, stagflation, depression, or, as he promised and some still believe, a booming economy for everybody (like the one we had when Biden was president?). Big Business officials tell him he’s on the verge of hurting Christmas for millions of children – not to mention themselves and their lost profits — and he indicates he doesn’t care. They tell him he’s about to dramatically increase the price of automobiles and he blatantly says out loud that he doesn’t care. He spits in the face of farmers by cutting off their most important channels to foreign customers. Rural people broke heavily for Trump, and he’s taking away some of their most cherished governmental services – even, it appears, cutting into Medicaid to pay for huge tax breaks for billionaires. He also must know that those 9 million people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and stayed home in 2024 will be out in droves in 2026 and 2028, and the vast majority of them will not vote for him. He doesn’t care about any of that. Instead, he declares himself “ruler of America and the world” and plans to give himself a multimillion-dollar parade for his birthday June 14, just like the big boys do in Russia, Hungary, Turkey, North Korea…

Trump’s popularity plummets more every day. He has the lowest approval rating at this point in his presidency than any president in at least seven decades. A Washington Post survey put his rating at 31 percent, but it’s that high only because of his slavish MAGA followers. His numbers everywhere else are in freefall. Pew research shows his support among Latinos, a crucial group that helped him win the White House last November, has collapsed to 27 percent. A Fox News survey – repeat, Fox News – shows his support among independents has plunged into the 20s. And now comes a Newsweek report that shows him with negative numbers in every swing state that elected him. Every one.

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And then there is the matter of using the office for personal financial gain. The Constitution’s Emoluments Clause is clear on that. Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 specifies that “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

An “emolument” is an “advantage, profit or gain received as a result of one’s employment or one’s holding of office.” Trump has openly trampled on that clause every day, literally every day, he’s held office, and now he’s on the verge of accepting, from Qatar, the granddaddy of all emoluments: a $400 million, lavishly outfitted Boeing 747-8 — “a flying palace” — that would be used as Air Force One until he left office, then would be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library for his personal use.

Trump’s response to all that? He called the poll numbers “fake” and demanded the pollsters “be investigated for election fraud.” And as for the airplane, he said accepting it does not run afoul of the Emoluments Clause and he’d be a fool not to accept it.

Both those answers would be pathetic even if he meant them, which he plainly did not. He knows better. He just doesn’t care. The only thing he cares about are billionaires, preferably white male billionaires.

Can you imagine that any politician facing an election would do any of that? Does that sound like someone who is concerned about there even being elections in 2026 and 2028?

Trump’s anti-democracy words were chilling when he first spoke them, and they are even more chilling today now that he acts as though he believes them, as though there will never be another election, as though he has the power to cancel elections..

Trump cannot cancel an election, of course. But he and MAGA-related elections officials around the nation could cause enough disruption and doubt (in Maga minds, anyway) that mass confusion could prevail.

The plain truth is that Trump has failed. He caved on his China tariffs. He asked pharmaceutical companies for ridiculous prescription drug cuts and pretended it was an order. He cut and ran from his failed Houthi play. He took credit for an India-Pakistan ceasefire that India said he did not broker. He had to retract two more high-profile nominees because they were so absurdly unqualified. So much more.

And that’s where We the People come in. Our public pro-democracy, anti-MAGA demonstrations are having an effect. Democrats in Washington are hearing us and reacting boldly. Even some Republicans are beginning to lean our way. Judges across the nation are feeling our support.

Bottom line: We have Trump on the run so we must keep him running. More than 5 million of us turned out for the April 5 Hands Off rally across the nation, and it appears – and I earnestly hope — we’ll have that many and more turn out to protest Trump’s birthday parade..

We are winning. If we don’t give up, we will win.

 

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