White House to Trump: ‘You cannot only love America when you win’

The White House on Saturday responded to Donald Trump calling for the suspension of the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election, saying in a statement, “You cannot only love America when you win.”

“The Constitution brings the American people together – regardless of party – and elected leaders swear to uphold it,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said. “Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation, and should be universally condemned.”

Earlier, in a post on his Truth Social network, the former president had called for the “termination” of constitutional laws, while citing conspiracy theories about the presidential election he lost.

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

Trump’s post came hours after Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk revealed sensitive deliberations at the social media company around Hunter Biden’s personal computer files in the fall of 2020.

The internal company discussions offered insight on the internal confusion at Twitter as it responded to the New York Post’s reporting on then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son in the closing weeks of the last presidential campaign.

POLITICO has not independently verified the communications, which were given to Substack writer Matt Taibbi and posted Friday night. Musk late Friday suggested that another batch of revelations would land Saturday. As of this writing, another batch has not been released.

Musk on Saturday afternoon defended his release of the files, though admitted there may be a "legal risk" in the action.

"We’re just going to put all the information out there try to get a clean slate," Musk said in a Twitter Spaces live chat. Any legal risk is "less of a concern than just clearing the air and making sure that people know what really happened," Musk said.

On the promised release of another batch of files, Musk said he was "somewhat leaving this up to Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss." He indicated it would focus on events after the election, including "government influence" on the platform.

Candidly, he admitted he'd "read hardly any" of the files."

Asked whether any DNC or Biden campaign requests to take down content related to Hunter Biden would be released, Musk replied, “The intent is to release all the files.”

In response to Trump's call to suspend Constitutional laws, the DNC said in a statement: “Donald Trump lost by 7 million votes in 2020 and his calls to undermine our democracy cost his party key races in 2022. The continued silence by Republican leaders, including his potential primary competitors, shows a MAGA party that is beholden to Trumpism, his divisive rhetoric, and his extreme positions.”

Trump, who has declared his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, preceded his Truth Social post with several posts focused on Big Tech’s role in policing misinformation in the runup to the 2020 election.

He followed up with a post later Saturday saying, “UNPRECEDENTED FRAUD REQUIRES UNPRECEDENTED CURE!”

Christopher Cadelago contributed to this report.