Rep. Paul Gosar Endorsed Trump’s Call to ‘Terminate’ Constitutional Rules

Ryan Bort
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Paul Gosar Constitution - Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Paul Gosar Constitution - Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Republicans have largely been silent about Donald Trump’s call to “terminate” certain provisions of the Constitution in order to overturn the results of the 2020 election and reinstall himself in the White House. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), however, has spoken out about the anti-democratic idea: He supports it.

“I support and agree with the former President,” he wrote on Twitter on Wednesday before the deleting the tweet amid backlash. “Unprecedented fraud requires unprecedented cure.”

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Trump responded to the unremarkable release of the “Twitter Files” last Friday — which mostly revealed what had already been known about the company’s deliberations surrounding the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election — by writing on Truth Social that “Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

Republicans largely shied away from denouncing the former president’s suggestion that the Constitution should be shredded. “He says a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen,” Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) squirmed during an appearance on ABC’s This Week. Some other GOP politicians said they didn’t agree with terminating the Constitution but stopped short of criticizing Trump directly. “Obviously, I don’t support that,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) managed on CNN’s State of the Union.

Gosar, one of the most prominent conspiracy theorists in Congress who earlier this year participated in a conference hosted by white nationalist Nick Fuentes, didn’t mince words, and the fact that Trump’s call to tear up the document the GOP prides itself on defending now has a vocal audience in Congress is more than a little troubling — especially considering Gosar and his fellow Republicans are now set to assume control of the House of Representatives.

Trump, earlier this week, seemed to recognize that pushing for the Constitution to be terminated may not be a winning message for a presidential candidate. He tried to claim on Truth Social on Monday that he didn’t actually say what he said. “The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution,” he wrote on Monday. “This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES.”

Gosar was apparently a little late to get the memo.

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