On 6 January 2021, when Congress was convened to certify the Electoral College vote that would make Joe Biden president on 20 January, President Donald Trump held a rally in Washington, D.C. Thousands of his most ardent supporters attended this gathering, where Trump gave one of his usual incoherent word salad speeches, dripping with contempt for the media, and loaded with his perceived grudges and resentments. In his torrent of words and spittle, the following were the key phrases that whipped the crowd up into a fury:
Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We’re supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution. Now, it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.
While the crowd did march peacefully to the Capitol, they didn’t behave patriotically once they reached the building, unless your definition of patriotism involves storming the legislative seat of the federal government while representatives and senators are in the process of certifying the Electoral College votes for president and vice president. Five people were killed during the abortive insurrection, with numerous members of Congress fleeing for their lives as the scum shouted, “Hang Mike Pence!” Some of the scum were even able to erect a gallows on one the lawns surrounding the Capitol building, hoping to use it to murder Vice President Pence.
Trump retreated to the White House as the mob stormed the Capitol. Despite pleas from several of his Cabinet members, he waited for hours before authorizing the Secretary of Defense to deploy troops so that the rebellion could be put down. He finally made an appeal to the scum to “go home”, but by then the damage had been done. For the first time in US history the transfer of power between an outgoing and incoming administration wasn’t peaceful. By nightfall two brigades of combat troops were surrounding the Capitol as Congress, for the first time in its history, certified the Electoral College vote under armed guard.
Trump left office on the morning of 20 January 2021, becoming the first president since Woodrow Wilson not to attend the inauguration of the man who succeeded him in office. Wilson, who had suffered a crippling stroke in the autumn of 1919, had been warned by his doctor that his health would be in danger were he to take part in the inaugural ceremonies. Trump, who had put the health of American democracy in peril since taking office on 20 January 2017, wisely gauged the mood of the country and decided not to attend Joe Biden’s swearing in, prompting President-elect Biden to remark, “smartest decision that he’s ever made.”
Since Trump’s departure from office, he has been indicted four times. Two of those indictments are directly related to the 2020 election and the attempt by Trump and his subordinates to overturn the results of that election. The federal indictment relating to the 2020 election deals with Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection. It is this indictment, along with how Trump incited the crowd to “march on the Capitol” that has prompted some legal scholars to opine that under the words of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Trump is ineligible to run for the presidency.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment:
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
The 14th Amendment was voted out of Congress and sent to the states for ratification shortly after the end of the Civil War. Section 3 was included to bar former Confederate officials from holding federal office. Professor William Baude of the University of Chicago, and Professor Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas, have written a 126 page article for the University of Pennsylvania Law School, stating that Donald Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection constitutes “engaging in insurrection or rebellion”, which bars him from office.
Baude and Paulsen are not wild eyed lefties. They are members of the Federalist Society, that organization so near and dear to the hearts of those conservatives who see the Constitution the same way a three year old sees his mother: a thing of beauty that can do no wrong. The authors’ membership in this organization has given their article considerable weight among that small group of Republicans who are determined to keep Trump from becoming the Republican presidential candidate in 2024. This article has also given birth to efforts in Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Wisconsin to bar Trump from the primary ballot and the general election ballot if he is the GOP nominee.
This is a bad idea….
For the record, I absolutely despise Trump and his followers, and if it were up to me, Trump would have been subjected to an emergency Night and Fog decree at 12:01 on 20 January 2021. I also despise Vladimir Putin, but I have a great deal of respect for how he dealt with Yevgeni Prigozhin’s attempted coup of 24 June 2023. On 23 August 2023, eight weeks after his botched uprising, Prigozhin, along with most of the leadership of the Wagner paramilitary group, were assassinated when their plane exploded while flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg. That’s how you deal with insurrection: you ruthlessly and swiftly eliminate those who try to overthrow the government, along with their associates.
But, this is the United States, and we’re a nation of laws (allegedly), so Trump and his henchmen must have their day in court. Since Trump is also pursuing his party’s presidential nomination, he will have his day (or days, given the interminable nature of our electoral process) at the ballot box, and it’s at the ballot box where his fitness for office should be decided.
For the sake of playing “what if”, let’s suppose that Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Wisconsin are successful in their efforts to use Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and Trump is barred from the ballot in those states. That won’t prevent him from winning the nomination. Let’s suppose that he is the Republican nominee, and those states, plus others, are successful in barring him from the ballot in the general election. Then, let us suppose that those states where his name isn’t on the ballot, hold the Electoral College votes that could give him the victory over President Biden. The reaction from the scum who support Trump would make the January 6 insurrection attempt look like a poorly executed hand job.
…unless it leads to a repeat of the 1860 election’s aftermath
That was the last election where the candidate of a major party was kept off the the ballot. The candidate was Abraham Lincoln, Republican presidential nominee. The Republican party was adamantly opposed to the spread of slavery into the territories conquered during the Mexican-American War. Slave states knew that limiting slavery to where it already existed meant the end of the “peculiar institution” as new free states were added, so the following states omitted Lincoln’s name from their ballots in the 1860 election:
* Alabama
* Arkansas
* Florida
* Georgia
* Louisiana
* Mississippi
* North Carolina
* South Carolina
* Tennessee
* Texas
* Virginia
The clever reader will note one prevailing trend among the states in the list: after Lincoln won the 1860 election, each of these states seceded from the Union. Should Trump “win” the 2024 election by prevailing in the Electoral College, but losing the popular vote, those states he doesn’t win should begin the process of leaving the Union. An election “victory” of that nature would be the third time in less than twenty years that the tyranny of the minority has won a national election. Trump and the Heritage Foundation have already laid out their vision for how to rule the country here, so seceding states would simply be avoiding the coming dictatorship. Secession in 1860-1861 was executed to preserve slavery. Secession in 2024-2025 would be executed to preserve what’s left of this republic, and to start over again with a democracy that is designed for the 21st century and beyond.