It was just five days ago when Donald Trump broke new rhetorical ground when pushing ridiculous election conspiracy theories. The former president, by way of his social media platform, made the case that his fictional claims about systemic voter fraud are not only true, they’re so significant that they “allow for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
As we discussed soon after, it’s an argument predicated on the idea that the laws that serve as the foundation for the United States must be discarded, at least temporarily, because Trump has bonkers ideas about the election he lost two years ago.
As several prominent Republicans publicly distanced themselves from the former president’s missive, Trump tried to argue that he didn’t actually write what he’d obviously written. The hapless effort was emblematic of the fact that he’d pushed a line that no one was prepared to endorse.
Well, almost no one. HuffPost reported yesterday:
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) on Wednesday endorsed former President Donald Trump’s call to terminate the Constitution over false claims the 2020 election was fraudulent in a tweet that he later deleted. “I support and agree with the former president,” the far-right lawmaker wrote, sharing a screengrab of Trump’s widely condemned Truth Social post. “Unprecedented fraud requires unprecedented cure.”
A related report from Politico noted that the Arizona congressman deleted his message “a little more than an hour” after it was first published. Nevertheless, Gosar’s tweet was up long enough to be widely seen, captured, and disseminated.
NBC News reached out to the Republican’s office to ask why the tweet was deleted and if Gosar stood by his original statement. A spokesperson for the lawmaker responded: “No one in Congress has fought for constitutional values more than Congressman Gosar. He is known as a strict constitutionalist for good reason. He has a decade of votes proving that. President Trump has reissued his statement to clarify what he meant. Those who claim either Trump or Congressman Gosar don’t believe in the Constitution are acting in bad faith or are low IQ people unable to comprehend our language and our actions.”
I’m not altogether sure what this meant or how it helped. The former president published a statement calling for a suspension of constitutional law. Many Republicans rejected the argument. Gosar, in contrast, endorsed the statement, adding provocative phrasing about “unprecedented fraud” — which did not actually occur in reality — requiring an “unprecedented cure.”
We’re now supposed to believe the congressman and Trump are champions of the Constitution?
None of these developments is especially surprising. Gosar has earned a reputation as one of Congress’ most radical members, and if any federal lawmaker was likely to endorse Trump’s outlandish missive, it was the Arizonan. It was about a year ago when House Democrats stripped Gosar of his committee assignments for releasing an animated video that depicted him killing one of his congressional colleagues and attacking President Joe Biden. Gosar had earlier faced condemnations for his associations with white nationalists, his praise for insurrectionist rioters, and his anti-election efforts. But stepping back further, let’s also not forget that House Republican leaders are nevertheless poised to reward, not punish, Gosar in the next Congress, restoring him to committees and treating him as a member in good standing. The amazing thing isn’t that the far-right congressman endorsed legal radicalism; the amazing thing is that his party couldn’t care less.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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