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Burning it down one match at a time

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 13, 2023

It’s Friday the 13th

Playing with Matches photo 2012 by Dennis Wilkinson via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED)

Donald Trump’s attorneys this week argued in a Colorado case brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) that the Constitution does not prohibit him from running for office. Based on Trump’s Jan. 6 actions, CREW hopes to disqualify Trump from the state’s ballot under the 14th Amendment’s Insurrection Clause prohibiting any officer who has “engaged in insurrection” against the United States from holding a civil, military, or elected office unless approved by a two-thirds majority of the House and Senate.

But this is Donald Trump we’re talking about. And Trump attorneys. They argue the Constitution does not apply to him becuase he never took an oath “to support the Constitution of the United States” per the amendment’s language (Law & Crime):

“Section Three does not apply to President Trump,” the filing reads. “Section Three disqualifies a person from holding office only if he “previously [took] an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State…’ Because President Trump was never a congressman, state legislator, or state officer, Section Three applies only if he was an ‘officer of the United States.’ But as that term was used in Section Three, it did not cover the President.”

[…]

“[T]he Presidential oath, which the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment surely knew, requires the President to swear to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution—not ‘to support’ the Constitution,” the motion reads. “Both oaths put a weighty burden on an oath-taker. However, because the framers chose to define the group of people subject to Section Three by an oath to ‘support’ the Constitution of the United States, and not by an oath to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment never intended for it to apply to the President.”

You read that right.

“If they wanted to include the President in the reach of Section Three, they could have done so by expanding the language of which type of oath would bring an ‘officer’ under the strictures of Section Three,” the Monday motion argues. “They did not do so, and no number of semantical arguments will change this simple fact. As such, Section Three does not apply to President Trump.”

Cleanup on Aisle R

Meantime, with military aid urgently needed by allies Ukraine and Israel, and with threats of a widening war in the Middle East, and with funds for running our own country set to run out in days, the Party of Trump is in ccontrol of the U.S. House without a Speaker authorized to bring such measures for a vote in the House. The party’s lunatic fringe ousted Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California from that position ten days ago.

Last night, the apparent frontrunner for the speaker post, House majority leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), withdrew his nomination for lack of support. Scalise narrowly defeated Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio in a caucus vote on Wednesday. He needs 217 votes and saw no path to winning after an hours-long meeting.

NBC News:

Exiting the meeting before it ended, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., openly fretted that his party’s narrow majority may never find the 217 votes necessary to elect a speaker.

He blasted eight Republican “traitors” — a word he used four times in a hallway interview — who voted with Democrats to remove former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and “put us in this situation.” And if those eight decide to back Scalise, Rogers warned, “then there’s just another eight like them” who could create further trouble.

“The bottom line is we have a very fractured conference, and to limit ourselves to just getting 217 out of our conference, I think, is not a wise path,” Rogers told NBC News, adding that Republicans may “absolutely” need some Democratic votes to elect a speaker.

Once again, the GOP needs Democrats to clean up the mess they created.

Heather Cox Richardson offers additional details:

The Republican chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Mike McCaul of Texas, today told reporters, “Every day that goes by, it gets more dangerous.” He continued:  “I see a lot of threats out there, but one of the biggest threats I see is in that room [pointing to where the Republicans were meeting], because we can’t unify as a conference and put a speaker in the chair together.” 

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) today said it is “urgently necessary” for the Republicans to “get their act together and elect a Speaker from within their own ranks, as it is the responsibility of the majority party to do, or have traditional Republicans break with the extremists within the House Republican Conference and partner with Democrats on a bipartisan path forward. We are ready, willing, and able to do so. I know there are traditional Republicans who are good women and men who want to see government function, but they are unable to do it within the ranks of their own conference, which is dominated by the extremist wing, and that’s why we continue to extend the hand of bipartisanship to them.”

Journalist Brian Tyler Cohen, who hosts the podcast No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, summed up the day when he wrote: “The fact that ALL Republicans would rather fight over Scalise (who attended a neo-Nazi event) or Jordan (who allegedly covered up rampant sexual abuse) rather than simply work with Democrats to elect a Speaker says it all.”

Federal prosecutors slapped Trump wannabe, Rep. George Santos of New York, with a 23-count superseding indictment on Tuesday charging him with “‘repeatedly, without their authorization,’ distributing [donors’] money to his and other candidates’ campaigns and to his own bank account.” Santos refuses to resign. His vote is essential for Republicans seeking the speakership.

The most likely Republican to win the party’s 2024 nomination for president (in case you need reminding) is this guy:

In DC Comics, The Joker is the Clown Prince of Crime. In D.C., the title of Clown Prince of Politics is up for grabs. Donald Trump is the clear frontrunner. But he’s hotly pursued by multiple others in Republican ranks.

And should Trump falter, conservatives behind No Labels have a backup plan for thwarting the will of the people.

Opponents of democracy seem to believe that if they throw enough matches at the Constitution it will catch fire eventually.

It’s not as if Senate Democrats don’t have a member under indictment. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey stands accused not only of bribery but of being a foreign agent for Egypt. But Senate Democrats in numbers have called for his immediate resignation. The Hill reports “Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) on Thursday called on the full Senate to vote on a resolution to expel” Menendez.  

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