OPINION: NC superintendent candidate Michele Morrow called for military coup to keep Trump in power in unearthed January 6 video

A newly unearthed video shows how far Michele Morrow, the Republican candidate to lead NC’s public schools, was willing to go to keep Donald Trump in power in 2020.

The Republican running to lead North Carolina’s K-12 schools as Superintendent of Public Instruction publicly called for Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and use the military to stay in power after he lost the 2020 presidential election.

Michele Morrow made the comments in a video recorded the evening of January 6, 2021 after attending the violent assault on the Capitol. Morrow subsequently deleted the video after she decided to run for public office in an  attempt to whitewash her past. 

But the internet is forever.  

Morrow, a diehard supporter of Donald Trump, has made no secret about her presence at the Capitol on January 6–even disclosing that she brought her children with her to teach them “a lesson about citizens’ role in a democracy.”

However, Morrow’s calls for Trump to use the military to prevent the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our nation’s history had not previously come to light.

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Morrow is a former registered nurse who homeschools her children and has never held a job in any public school system. She defeated current Republican state superintendent Catherine Truitt in the March primary. 

Morrow’s upset win made national news, partly because of her lack of job qualifications but also due to her long history of inflammatory rhetoric including racist rants about people speaking languages other than English and calls for prominent Democrats to be executed.

Morrow has tried her damndest to remove her most inflammatory comment from public view, likely because she knows her sentiments appeal only to a small group of extreme right wingers. But the majority of her videos had already been saved by the anti-Morrow activist group Say No to Extremists.  

The video below was recorded in Morrow’s hotel room the evening of January 6, 2021 and was first reported by CNN:

Here’s what she said:

“President Trump is still president until the 20th.  So he can still invoke the executive order against voter fraud. And now he has every player that participated in his sights, and they can all be arrested for treason. And if the police won’t do it and the Department of Justice won’t do it, then he will have to enact the Insurrection Act. In which case the Insurrection Act completely puts the Constitution to the side and says, now the military rules all. Okay?  And let me tell you, President Trump, President Trump has the military on his side because the military and many leaders in the military who love this nation and who love our Constitution and who have put their life on the line to protect the freedoms of people in the United States that they will never meet, they chose President Trump to be their candidate. So as long as he invokes the Insurrection Act before the inauguration, then he’s going to be re-inaugurated. He’s going to be put back in.”

North Carolina voters already had cause for concern about Michele Morrow, given her history of disrespect for our educational institutions and her complete dearth of experience for the position of superintendent.  But this new evidence of her disdain for democracy and our Constitution should be completely disqualifying for public office.

Calling for the Constitution to be suspended and for the military to be activated to ensure a losing presidential candidate can stay in power is something we would expect a drunken MAGA uncle to say when lighting the fuse on a Thanksgiving table foodfight. It’s absolutely shameful that North Carolina has a candidate running for statewide office who publicly issued that call after attending the failed coup on January 6.  

Morrow would love for this story and the rest of the chatter about her violent rhetoric to fade from the headlines, because her path to victory depends on votes from moderates who don’t support things like military coups or the execution of Barack Obama on live television.  

It’s up to those of us who believe that voters deserve to have a clear picture of their choices on Nov. 5 to educate our friends and neighbors on the true threat she poses to our state.

You can watch the entirety of Morrow’s deleted January 6 video here.