Congress has a Constitutional duty to end Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign ASAP
The 14th amendment gives us one simple trick for punishing insurrectionists and saving democracy. And Democrats must use it before it’s too late.
What’s the only real consequence Donald Trump has suffered for his role in the January 6th riots at the Capitol and trying to overthrow a election where he got 7 million fewer votes?
Losing access to his Twitter and Facebook accounts.
These suspensions were only possible because the social media platforms’ terms and conditions allow them to ban users for almost any reason — including sexually harassing Tony the Tiger.
It’s not reassuring to recognize that even Facebook, which is more like a curse on humanity than a business, currently has a better immune system than American democracy. But that doesn’t have to be true.
The Constitution has its own terms and conditions: The 14th amendment bars anyone from holding federal offices including the presidency who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”
And a majority vote of Congress can turn this “institution” — the kind of institution that our Re-Founders felt was necessary after the Civil War — into reality.
And now is the time to do it.
The pro-insurrection rally on Capitol Hill last weekend was a bust, as experts on extremism including Jared Holt predicted. This comic flailing can feel reassuring. But the real danger is that the mockery distracts from the far more effective protests are happening at school boards and inside state houses, as Trump’s insurrection continues. He and his supporters are trying to undermine the last election result, feeding the dangerous fantasy that he’ll he “reinstated,” for a simple reason. They’re preparing to make sure that what Trump tried to do — take power despite losing both the popular and electoral votes overwhelmingly — is not only possible but inevitable in 2024.
Trump’s allies keep teasing the launch of his 2024 campaign, as the ex-president continues to try to undo the last election through “audits” and the ex-president is literally demanding that Secretaries of State decertify wins that are now almost a year old. And now we have the step-by-step coup recipe Mike Pence was supposed to follow on January 6th but didn’t — we’re supposed to believe — because Dan Quayle talked him out of it.
Looking at the six steps of this electoral coup, please note #4:
That sends the matter to the House, where the “the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote . . . .” Republicans currently control 26 of the state delegations, the bare majority needed to win that vote. President Trump is re-elected there as well.
Sending every presidential election to the House to let it decide who will sit in the White House for the next four years would create perpetual Republican rule, as the GOP controlled the majority of state delegations, the Constitution's current method of having the lower house of Congress decide Electoral College ties, even in 2020 when Democrats had around a 40 seat advantage.
Greg Sargent makes the excellent point that Democrats in Congress must reform the Electoral Count Act, or ECA, to prevent a stolen election. An emotion seconded by election law expert Rick Hasen in a new paper.
Hasen also disputes the principles behind the coup recipe laid out by Trump lawyer and Federalist society supervillian John Eastman.
But this only points that the fungible dangers that come when an avatar of bad faith like Donald Trump is allowed to participate in a system that is almost entirely dependent on the good faith of the actors. He’s no more loyal to any particular method of maintaining of power than he is to any particular person.
Trump is far from the only threat to American democracy hailing from the Republican Party, but he’s a unique threat who can only be contained by using ever lever possible to stunt his war on democracy.
Pence refused to follow the recipe the election for Trump, though he knew there was a violent mob outside the Capitol willing to back him up (or lynch him if necessary). He’d like to pretend his refusal indicates some sort of patriotism or respect for institutions. But I’d argue he gave in for similar reasons that provoked Larry Elder to concede quickly after he obviously lost his attempt to replace Gavin Newsom in the recent California recall: it’s not decency; it’s fear. Being an autocrat or tyrant is a rare thing. It requires an abundance of disdain multiplied by a sense of immunity to consequences.
Pence and Elder need jobs or patrons to live the sort of lives they want. Trump doesn’t.
Donald Trump is much better getting at away with crimes than America is at protecting our democracy. While the entire Republican party is perfectly fine with hijacking our democracy to ensure minority rule, few want to be the actual person who risks it all to abandon any pretense of abiding by the rule of law in order to grab that power.
Donald Trump absolutely does. So while we must fix our system starting with the Electoral Count Act, the system will never be enough to properly contain him.
Bob Woodward, the co-author of the new book Peril that revealed the coup recipe, identifies what he perceives as one reason that Trump wants to be president again.
“And the answer is: to be Donald Trump,” Woodward said. “And that’s not an agenda. That does not connect to the needs of the people in the country.”
There are obvious other reasons.
Why would Trump not pursue the one job in the United States that prevents him from being indicted? Especially when that job gives him permission to raise hundreds of millions that help keep his businesses afloat?
But there’s an even worse reason Trump so obviously wants to be president and is rigging system to make sure he can do so while losing the popular vote by even more than 7 million votes. It’s a reason that must prompt Congress to act.
That reason? Revenge.
