We wondered just how dirty the regime would play to disrupt democracy and prevent Trump from taking office again. Now we know.
joins me to discuss the breaking news out of Maine. The state joined Colorado in preventing Trump from appearing on the ballot The Colorado decision came from its Longhouse harridan supreme court, while the Maine was a unprecedented “ruling” from its Longhouse harridan secretary of state, a former ACLU director.This has never happened before, even close, as no unelected official (a judge or a secretary of state) has ever had the audacity to bar a political rival from running for office, perhaps the most flagrantly obvious violation of democratic principles imaginable. Yet that didn’t stop left wing patronage organizations like Citizens for Ethics (CREW) from filing what should have been frivolous lawsuits and petitions on behalf of whichever random citizens it can find. Both the Colorado and Maine decisions were the result of such frivolous lawsuits on positions, organized and filed by left wing activist organizations on behalf of private citizens.
In most instances, like California, Minnesota, and New Hampshire, the cases were thrown out. This is because it should be obvious that politically-biased unelected state officials have no standing to bar a democratically-elected president from the ballot.
But two such officials in Colorado and Maine did just that. Their reasoning: the 3rd section of the 14th Amendment contains an insurrection clause:
This was written to bar Confederates from serving in office after the Civil War, and most definitely not for situations in which a candidate held a protest in which he said:
"I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order. Respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!"
Nonetheless, there are issues to analyze: one factual and two legal.
Factually, the question is whether Trump did in fact “commit insurrection.” Despite the above statement, the Colorado Supreme Court used creepy testimony from psychologists to show that Trump didn’t actually mean what he said. The Maine secretary of state also used her own impressions about Trump’s true intent to arrive at her conclusions, which is a massive stretch. Her decision contains references to cases that seemingly have no relation whatsoever to the situation, as Michael Tracy unpacks here. It’s a gross abuse of power, and frankly she should be sanctioned and potentially jailed for it, as Charles Haywood points out here.
Legally, there are two issues. Does the 14th Amendment section 3 apply to Trump? And does the 14th Amendment section 3 give anyone, private individuals, courts, or secretaries of state, the standing to remove him from the ballot? This great American Mind article provides great analysis of both issues.
On the first issue, whether the 14th Amendment applies to duly elected presidents:
“In defining who is potentially subject to disqualification, Section 3 specifies those who “as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States,” had previously “taken an oath…to support the Constitution.” Reading the section in light of the constitutional distinction between elected and appointed federal office-holders, it is plain that the section refers to (1) those who were elected to Congress and (2) those who were appointed (to offices in the federal executive or judicial branches). The section does not refer to or include the elected president or vice president.
This omission must have been deliberate; it could not have been the product of simple negligence or inadvertence. The 39th Congress, which drafted Section 3, spent months in drafting and debating it. That Congress included some exceptionally fine constitutional lawyers among its members. After Congress proposed the amendment, it was further examined and debated in the press and by the public. To echo the Colorado justice, had it been considered so important to include the president, then the drafters of the amendment would have spelled it out.”
On the second, whether states or individuals have the standing to make such decisions:
“Section 3 is “non-self-executing” or, in simpler terms, it does not provide a cause of action or legal claim enabling challengers to seek to have a prospective candidate for office (or an official-elect, or even an incumbent) disqualified through a court order—unless Congress has authorized the court to hear such a complaint and to order such relief. This argument is powerfully bolstered by the actions and pronouncements of high-ranking federal officials soon after Section 3 was adopted—including President U.S. Grant, Chief Justice Salmon Chase, and the influential Republican Senator Lyman Trumbull. All of these contemporaneous figures were familiar with the purposes of Section 3 and understood full well what it meant.
In general, moreover, as the Supreme Court has recurrently (and recently) emphasized, few constitutional provisions implicitly create causes of action for the use of private litigants; normally constitutional clauses require “execution” or implantation by an Act of Congress before the courts can grant relief based on them.”
But of course, no facts or law matter to the political activists who have abused their power to effectively end the American experiment with Democracy. Trump has been labeled “insurrectionist,” telegraphed by the partisan media all the way back to January 6th and coming to fruition now as states helmed by political activists harvest the fruits of the patronage and media networks that manufactured this entire affair.
It’s an absolute shame that no right wing organizations prepared for this obvious outcome by filing their own insurrection cases, for e.g. against the public officials that supported and encouraged CHOP/CHAZ in Seattle, which was an actual insurrection. Why the right totally missed this, and what we can do about it, is a big part of my discussion with Raw Egg.
Raw Egg has recently published two pieces about regime efforts to destroy Trump and alienate deprive his voters of the right to vote for him by any means necessary.
In the first, “On Savior Complexes” for Lotus Eaters, he argues that the right externalizes our savior complexes, but that nobody is coming to save us.
In the other, for Human Events, he deftly analyzes the mainstream media’s recent flurry of fever dreams about assassinating Trump.
81. SPECIAL RELEASE - Raw Egg Nationalist on Trump v. Maine and Colorado