As former President Donald Trump dominates the Republican presidential primary, some liberal groups and legal experts contend that a rarely used clause of the Constitution prevents him from being president after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The 14th Amendment bars from office anyone who once took an oath to uphold the Constitution but then “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” against it. A growing number of legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump after his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the U.S. Capitol.
Two liberal nonprofits pledge court challenges should states’ election officers place Trump on the ballot despite those objections.
The effort is likely to trigger a chain of lawsuits and appeals across several states that ultimately would lead to the U.S. Supreme Court, possibly in the midst of the 2024 primary season. The matter adds even more potential legal chaos to a nomination process already roiled by the front-runner facing four criminal trials.
What (slightly?) soothes me a tiny bit is knowing that a DeSantis presidency would almost certainly be significantly worse. Trump, for all his flaws, can be relied on for exactly one thing: he cares only about himself. He doesn’t really have any significant policy objectives beyond inflating his own ego. That would still be disastrous in a lot of ways, but there’s a raw vindictiveness to DeSantis that Trump doesn’t really have.
We also have the benefit of knowing that Biden can and has beaten Trump before, and he hasn’t really gained any new fans. A Trump nomination is probably the clearest shot we have to a good 2024 (yes, I know we’ve heard this one before).
Trump doesn’t need his own policy objectives. He has republican think tanks to do that work for him. He just signs his name. It’s not like it was his idea to pack the supreme court. That came from Heritage Foundation or some such place.
I think this is ultimately worse than DeSantis because Trump will allow ALL THE CRAZIES to get around him (Sydney Powell anyone?) and that is what he’ll do. DeSantis will bring your average GOP talking points with extra racism on top, but he’s probably not going to bring insurrectionists into the conversation.