What now seems like a very long time ago, like most Americans, I once relished the phrase, “anyone can become president.”
That was then, when the race to the White House included aspiring leaders like Mitt Romney, whose biggest oddity was that he was Mormon and whose public shame was making his dog ride in a carrier on top of the family car.
Compare that to the current favored GOP nominee, who had to pay millions to a woman he was accused of sexually assaulting in a dressing room and can’t be on the Colorado ballot because of his deep involvement in the Jan. 6 failed insurrection.
Trump, and his zealots, argue that it’s “undemocratic” for the Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine secretary of state to hold Trump to the same law that everyone else must abide by.
It’s true, once you reach 35, anyone born in the United States can become president, with one exception: Donald Trump.
Trump isn’t ruled out as a presidential candidate because of his incredible passion for lying, so much so that for the first time I can remember, everyone in the media freely calls out Trump for his voracious appetite for lies and disinformation.
Nobody is arguing that he can’t run for president because of his vast deceits, or that he paid hush money to an adult film actress from his campaign funds. In fact, there really wasn’t a question about whether Trump could run for president again after stealing and harboring hundreds of highly sensitive classified documents in his Florida home. That was after a strong majority of voters pushed him out of the White House, and after his failed insurrection failed to undo that.
There’s nothing in the Constitution that explicitly says you can’t run for president if you keep the nation’s blueprints for nuclear war in a box next to your Mar-A-Lago crapper or in a coat closet.
There’s nothing in the Constitution that says you can’t run for President, like Nikki Haley is, if you tell people that the Civil War broke out in the United States because of something to do with “the freedoms that people could and couldn’t do.” When a man who was listening to her bizarre response at a rally pushed back and said he was shocked she didn’t even mention that slavery thing, she said, “What do you want me to say about slavery?”
Nothing else, Ms. Halley. You’ve said it all.
She’s a dream candidate for democracy, however, compared to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis can also run for president even though he just can’t say enough bad about gays, transgender citizens, their parents, Disney, vaccines, Muslims, books and people who think women should make their own healthcare decisions. DeSantis paints a picture of himself so vile that only 60% of Florida could tolerate him, and no one else in the country.
Even Robert F. Kennedy Jr., king of the kray kray konspiracies, can’t be kept off the ballot. Even though he thinks Wi-Fi makes your brain leak and AIDS is caused by something besides HIV and vaccines are poison and Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese can’t get COVID and mass shootings come from prescription drugs, Kennedy speaks for himself.
Congressperson Pat Schroeder could have run for president, even after she cried in public. Arizona Sen. John McCain could have run for president even after handcuffing his campaign to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Only Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been derailed by Colorado’s newest fourteener, the third clause of the 14th Amendment.
After the Civil War — which had everything to do with slavery — the U.S. ratified the 14th Amendment to guarantee rights to former slaves and more.
“It also included a two-sentence clause called Section 3, designed to keep former Confederates from regaining government power after the war,” according to an Associated Press story last week by Nicholas Riccardi.
“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.”
Until Jan. 6, anyone, even Trump could become president.
But clearly understanding that allowing undemocratic racists to run the country would undermine what everyone else is trying to do here, post-Civil War congress added a rule. The unequivocal rules are, Trump and the few thousands of his minions who also participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection, can’t run for president, or anything else.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
Amen and Awomen!
Thank you and Bravo!!!!
Dave- But isn’t it the case here that the First Amendment rights of Trump and the GOP members who want to place him on the ballot far outweigh the 14th amendment argument to keep him off the ballot? You can’t cherry-pick one part of the 14th while ignoring the 1st. Sorry.
Our constitution is imperfect and at times would appear to internally contradict itself. No one should be surprised or outraged when the Supreme Court gives highest priority to the voters’ First Amendment rights despite the 14th amendment question.
Isn’t a “government of the people, by the people, for the people” the goal? The moment a judge or election official prevents any candidate from running, he or she acts directly against the people.
BTW I’m an independent centrist who never supported Trump. I do not believe he should be president, but I find the efforts to keep him off the ballot to be far more of the threat to our democracy.
Speech or action designed to prevent Congress from performing its duties or subverting electoral results are not protected by the 1st Amendment.
To reiterate, it’s the first amendment rights of voters who wish to put Trump on the ballot that the Colorado justices simply trampled outright.
Also— last I checked— juries and judges determine guilt or innocence. Not election officials. It’s called due process. Google it.
When this misguided action backfires to Trump’s benefit, history will record the inept foolishness of those who are now seeking to limit the voters’ choice. If let stand, this would be the largest disenfranchisement of voters in the country’s history.
Mr. Brown, I agree that Editor Perry’s Op Ed is flawed: the third clause of the Fourteenth Amendment appears in Section 1 of that amendment, and, depending on where you break clauses, could be the very “… nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;” which you are raising. Unfortunately, the courts have ruled that applying for or holding a particular job is not, in itself, a “liberty.” I personally have chafed under the need to fill out an I-9 form and provide evidence every time I sought a new job since the previous century. It became even more contentious when the presidential hopeful you are discussing declared that my “Certificate of Live Birth,” issued by a hospital and signed by an M.D., somehow does not count. I now have a very official-looking document, which I paid to have created by a bureaucrat in my native Virginia, but which was very obviously made on equipment which simply did not exist at the time I was born. Bogus? Apparently not!?!
Donald Trump runs on personal impunity and expects everyone else on the planet to accept and embrace that concept.
Pathetic to the extreme! He’s a horrible man! He’s done horrible things! Why shouldn’t he have to abide by the same laws as all other people in this country?
Stay tuned!
Agreed. I was gobsmacked when republicans started saying Trump didn’t take an oath to the Constitution when clearly he did when he was sworn in as president. And so did everyone in congress, even the ones who plotted with Trump to disrupt the “peaceful transfer of power” on J/6. They too must be stripped of serving…
Article II, Section 1, Clause 8:
“Before he/she enter on the Execution of his Office, he/she shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:–I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
So maybe doing what he did before, on and after January 6th is was the best of his ability, lol.