Donald Trump Still Determined To Strike In US
And the Supreme Court seems fine with it!
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that the plain language in the Constitution doesn’t apply to Donald Trump and that Colorado and other states can’t remove him from the presidential ballot just because he led an insurrection after losing the 2020 presidential race.
Alas, the courts were never going to save us, so we’ll just have to roll up our sleeves, organize like hell, and rid ourselves of Trump the old-fashioned way.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold told MSNBC’s Katy Tur, “My larger reaction is disappointment. I do believe that states under our Constitution should be able to bar oath-breaking insurrectionists. Ultimately, this decision leaves open the door for Congress to act to pass authorizing legislation, but we know that Congress is a nearly non-functioning body.”
However, the problem isn’t Congress in general. Democrats are actually competent. Rep. Jamie Raskin announced on Monday that House Democrats are working on a bill to disqualify Trump. That’s an obvious waste of time because Republicans currently control the House, and they are Trump’s willing accomplices. The MAGA mad House isn’t dysfunctional so much as corrupt to its core.
“Ultimately it will be up to the American voters to save our democracy in November,” Griswold said.
Many Democrats echoed Griswold’s sentiments. Political analyst Cliston Brown posted on social media, “At some point, reality is going to set in and we’re all going to realize what we all should have known years ago: Trump is going to be the Republican nominee, there’s no ‘silver bullet’ that’s going to keep him from running, and we’re going to have to beat him in the election.”
I don’t think people were demanding a silver bullet so much as hoping that the government would deal with an active national security threat. The government has clearly failed, especially Attorney General Merrick Garland who moved against Trump like that slug racing to class in Monsters University.
Just so we’re all clear: I didn’t want Trump removed from the ballot because I was afraid he might win (although some recent polls are alarming). I wanted him removed from the ballot because he attempted to overturn the last election. That’s not actually up for debate, despite what Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker seems to think. Sunday, Welker said Trump “allegedly” tried to overturn the 2020 election.
The defense I’ve seen for Welker’s “alleged” journalism is that she must present Trump’s attempted coup as an “alleged” event until he’s convicted of a crime. Technically, Trump’s charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. Then there’s his classified documents case, where he faces 31 charges under the Espionage Act. It’s a lot to keep track of, I know, but Welker probably has interns who can help. However, Trump’s months-long attempt to overturn the 2020 election remains a straightforward fact. He doesn’t deny it.
Compare this to Welker’s interview a few months ago with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: She refers to a “horrific mass shooting” in Lewiston, Maine. She doesn’t call it an “alleged” shooting. There are also several examples of the media objectively stating that Trump tried to overturn the election. Observable reality doesn’t become a subjective matter just because someone with 91 felony counts is running for president. Welker is “allegedly” hosting a news program not teaching an epistemology college course.
Trump is by definition an “insurrectionist.” What’s on the legal crucible right now is whether he’ll face any accountability for his unprecedented, anti-democratic actions.
We already beat Trump at the ballot box
Whenever pundits and elected officials wag their fingers and proclaim that we should beat Trump fairly and squarely at the ballot box, without all that 14th Amendment legal trickery, I want to scream like Annie Wilkes in Misery: “Have you all got amnesia?”A majority of Americans turned out in record numbers during a pandemic to remove Trump, and he wouldn’t concede defeat. He actively attempted to steal the election. We were all there. Last time, only his pride was on the line; now it’s his freedom. If he loses, he’s going to jail. We can safely assume he’ll “allegedly” try to overturn the election again, and he might very well succeed. Liz Cheney is no longer in Republican leadership or even a House member. Mitch McConnell is stepping down as Senate leader, and we’ll probably end up with a MAGA stooge replacement. It’s possible that President Joe Biden could win re-election while Democrats lose the Senate and fail to flip the House. Only people who regularly buy bridges in Brooklyn would trust that a Republican-controlled Congress will certify Biden’s Electoral College victory. This is why it’s a bad idea to put known election deniers and coup plotters on a presidential ballot and piously declare that we’ll beat them at the ballot box.
Trump and his goons expected mass resistance (from the public if not elected Democrats) if his 2000 coup was successful, and they planned a violent response. One of Trump’s named co-conspirators, Jeffrey Clark — a Justice Department official! — had proposed invoking the Insurrection Act on the public in the event of mass protests, which they would just deem unlawful “riots.” Sen. Tom Cotton had already proposed weaponizing the military against civilians exercising their First Amendment rights during the George Floyd protests. Republicans wouldn’t hesitate to put down any dissent after a stolen election.
It also seems as if there’s collective amnesia over the violence and harassment innocent people endured during Trump’s last coup attempt. Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman’s lives were destroyed. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, an estimated 11 percent of election officials will leave their jobs before the 2024 election. (Griswold has received about 500 death threats related to the ballot issue.) We know who’s responsible. Trump continues to call the 2020 election “rigged” and “stolen” at the campaign rallies that he’s nonetheless allowed to hold because our criminal justice system can’t seem to deal with this one specific criminal.
Removing Trump from the ballot was never about politics alone. Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis’ positions aren’t drastically different from Trump’s, but we can probably agree that neither politician inspires a cult following. No one would storm the Capitol if Haley or DeSantis lost the presidential election. We know what Trump is capable of, and yet we’re sleepwalking into another January 6, where people died and were permanently injured. That’s the best-case scenario!
Another failed Reconstruction
Cliston Brown also wrote, “Whether we like it or not, the 9-0 Supreme Court decision today was the correct decision. The disqualification of a national candidate by individual states would have opened up a big can of worms. Republicans in charge in key states would have started disqualifying Democrats.”
It’s true that DeSantis threatened to baselessly remove Biden from the Florida ballot, but those are mob tactics with no regard for the actual law. The first rule in fighting an authoritarian regime is to never preemptively surrender.
The 14th Amendment is one of the Reconstruction Amendments and was in part intended to bar from office those who had waged war against the nation. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long until former Confederates were holding prominent positions in government and newly freed Black people were denied the vote. Three years after January 6, the high-level coup plotters remain free and the ringleader might reclaim the executive branch. Meanwhile, Republican-run states have passed laws suppressing the Black vote that helped remove Trump.
Brown makes the fair argument that disqualifying a candidate from a state’s ballot is rightly a matter for Congress. The problem is that Congress is a political body, and if two-thirds of the House actually agreed to remove Trump, then he wouldn’t pose a threat in the first place. He’s far more dangerous than George Santos. The 14th Amendment logically provides for situations when an insurrectionist is otherwise politically viable. Trump has never enjoyed majority support. It’s possible that 2016 was the last election he’ll ever “win,” but his violent minority can still promote a reign of terror. We are long past viewing Trump and MAGA as a normal political movement and should start considering them a growing domestic terror threat.
Removing Trump from the ballot wasn’t an electoral short cut. It was defusing a ticking bomb that’s now set to go off in eight months.
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It's almost adorable to see liberals defend this SCOTUS decision on the basis of "now, this will prevent GOP-led states from disqualifying Democratic candidates from the ballot!" Oh you sweet summer child, on what planet do you think GOP officials in Texas are thinking "oh crap, now we can't pull this stunt ourselves?" They absolutely will, under any pretense they want ("we are enforcing Texas's ballot access law that prohibits candidates who refuse to enforce the Constitution"), SCOTUS will come up with a reason to support it, or more likely refuse to rule on it as a political question.
And this SCOTUS ruling just gave Congress an end-run around impeachment--Congress could by a bare majority pass a law finding a president to be an insurrectionist and therefore ineligible for office. Could a GOP Congress do such a thing, when it would require them to discard the filibuster? To ask the question is to answer it.
We're staring into the abyss now.
Glad that you mentioned that trump has already lost at the ballot box, Stephen. Instead of going away and building houses for the homeless or taking up painting as a hobby, he's whined about the 2020 election being "rigged and stollen," instigated an insurrection and is running for president again. The guy won't shut up or go away. Maybe, just maybe, this time, he will go away, when he loses again (I am being confident), if he's convicted.
As for individual states kicking trump. or any candidate, off the ballot, since each state runs their own elections, why should it be up to Congress? Either federalize the elections or let the states run them. Oh, and notice how quickly the Supreme Court came to this decision, but is dragging its heels on the immunity case?