Trump stokes fears with ‘unconstitutional’ Harris talk

Former President Trump is setting off alarms among critics as he pushes the claim that Vice President Harris’s ascent to become the Democratic nominee is somehow unconstitutional, with some warning he could be laying the groundwork to contest an electoral defeat as he did in 2020.

Trump has repeatedly sought to cast Harris replacing President Biden as the Democratic nominee as nefarious, likening it to a “coup” and in recent days claiming it may be unconstitutional because she was not atop the ballot in the primary process. 

Biden and other Democrats, as well as some Republican Trump critics, have suggested the former president’s rhetoric is intended to cast doubt on November’s election results should Harris prevail.

“We know one thing for sure. Trump never loses. And so if he’s not the winner of 2024 as in 2020, it must be because he was treated unfairly, yet again,” former Trump national security adviser John Bolton said on CNN.

“This is why people need to start thinking more now about how to deny Trump the ability the day after the election, if he loses, to try and throw the process into chaos again,” Bolton added.

Biden announced July 21 he would not seek reelection. Democrats quickly rallied behind Harris, who this week was officially certified as the party’s nominee following delegate voting.

Trump, who was leading Biden in the polls and appeared on track for victory in November, has repeatedly said the president was forced out and called it a “coup.” More recently, he has questioned whether Democrats replacing Biden with Harris somehow violated the Constitution, particularly with recent polls showing Harris closing in on him.

In a Truth Social post this week, Trump claimed Biden’s presidency was “Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him.” 

“From a constitutional standpoint, from any standpoint you look at, they took the presidency away,” Trump said at a Thursday press conference. 

Asked for his analysis of what made it unconstitutional, Trump pointed to Harris’s lack of support in a Democratic primary, including when she ran in 2020.

“The fact that you can get no votes, lose in the primary system — in other words you had 14 or 15 people, she was the first one out — and then you can then be picked to run for president. It seems to me actually unconstitutional. Perhaps it’s not,” Trump said.

David Axelrod, a former senior adviser in the Obama White House, posted on the social platform X that Trump was “laying the predicate to reject the results of an election he now fears he may lose” with his comments.

Some Republicans had suggested in July that any effort to replace Biden on the ballot could face legal challenges, but experts said any such effort would be unlikely to go anywhere in the courts.

The Canton Repository reported this week that an Ohio man who said he is voting for Trump filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent Harris from replacing Biden on the ballot. But the Ohio secretary of state’s office said parties have until Sept. 1 to nominate their candidate.

Sonia Gipson Rankin, a professor of law at the University of New Mexico, said Trump is alluding to the idea that because voters cast ballots for Biden in the primary process and he won’t be on the ballot, they aren’t getting a say. 

She noted that Democratic delegates never formally backed Biden to be the party’s nominee in a roll-call vote, and his name was not put on any ballots.

“Another issue will be who has standing to sue, and the [Republican National Committee] or former President Trump will have to decide if they want to pour resources toward this issue during this condensed campaign time frame,” Rankin said. “Federal courts have particularly strict requirements for standing, while state courts have their own rules, which often ensure that major party nominees automatically appear on the ballot.”

Trump’s rhetoric will be closely watched in light of what happened after he lost the 2020 election. Trump spent much of 2020 sowing doubt about the reliability of mail-in and absentee ballots, and he spent the weeks after Election Day claiming the result was fraudulent or rigged. He pursued numerous legal challenges, including up to the Supreme Court, but they were rejected for lack of evidence.

Trump’s claims culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol, where protesters violently clashed with law enforcement and stormed the building in an attempt to stop the certification of Biden’s victory. Trump has been criminally charged for his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

The former president has said during the 2024 cycle that he will accept the results if he deems the election to be “honest.”

“Of course there will be a peaceful transfer, and there was last time,” Trump said Thursday. “And there’ll be a peaceful transfer. I just hope we are going to have honest elections.”

Biden, in his first sit-down interview since opting not to run for reelection, said he’s “not confident at all” there will be a peaceful transfer of power next January if Trump loses.

“If Trump wins, no, I’m not confident at all. I mean if Trump loses I’m not confident at all,” Biden told “CBS Sunday Morning,” initially misspeaking before correcting himself.

“He means what he says,” Biden added. “We don’t take him seriously. He means it.”