Donald Trump has stumbled out of the blocks in his 2024 campaign

Another Donald Trump tantrum – this time calling for the “termination” of the election rules in the US constitution in order to overturn the results of the 2020 election and reinstate him as president – has been met with another, almost weary, response from the White House.

Trump has repeatedly, and falsely, claimed that he was the true winner of that presidential election, and it never takes much to get him to wade back into those waters. The trigger this time was the release of internal Twitter emails showing deliberation over an October 2020 New York Post story concerning material found on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden (the son of the current president). The emails show employees in the legal, policy and communications departments at Twitter at times disagreeing over whether to restrict the article under the company’s hacked materials policy.

Trump’s response on his Truth Social social media platform? “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” The response from the White House was so pointed that it could take your eye out. “Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation, and should be universally condemned,” the deputy White House press secretary, Andrew Bates, wrote.

“The Constitution brings the American people together – regardless of party – and elected leaders swear to uphold it. It’s the ultimate monument to all of the Americans who have given their lives to defeat self-serving despots that abused their power and trampled on fundamental rights,” Bates added.

It is the latest in a string of events that have characterised the first few weeks of Trump’s bid for re-election in 2024 as it stumbled out of the blocks. Recently, Trump’s team has had to try to fend off the bad press generated by the former president having had dinner with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, and white nationalist Nick Fuentes – both of whom took part in a truly awful interview with another notorious figure, Alex Jones, last week.

Beyond that, there are still a number of legal issues surrounding Trump. On Friday, former White House lawyers Pat Cipollone and Pat Philbin appeared before a federal grand jury investigating possible election subversion, after Trump’s unsuccessful bid to block their testimony. And on Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the 11th judicial circuit undid an earlier decision by a judge to appoint a special master to review documents seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as part of the justice department’s investigation into the possible mishandling of government records from Trump’s time in the White House.

That Court of Appeals verdict removes a roadblock for prosecutors, allowing them to use any of the 13,000 documents seized rather than wait for them to be reviewed to evaluate Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

All that, alongside the failure of Trump’s campaign to hold any events or rallies since he launched his re-election campaign in mid-November, gives the sense of a bid that is struggling to get into gear, despite the fact that Trump still leads in most of the polls asking who the Republicans want as their nominee.