“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.”
That’s Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a section designed to prevent men who left the Union for the Confederacy from ever returning and holding office again.
It seems logical. You try to overthrow the government, you don’t get to come back and be part of it later.
Unless, of course, you’re the one person in this country who doesn’t have to obey the laws everyone else has to live by.
Unless you’re Donald Trump.
The former president is almost completely out of control these days. Yesterday I wrote about his speech in which he promised to pardon the insurrectionists who attacked the U.C. Capitol for him, but I didn’t mention his attack on prosecutors in Washington, New York and Atlanta who are preparing criminal cases against him.
He called them racists, and of course all three prosecutors are black.
It’s difficult to imagine anyone using the Fourteenth Amendment to deny Trump the right to run for president again, especially since Republicans have stubbornly refused to hold him responsible for any of the ridiculous things he has done.
But don’t kid yourself.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang but with an insurrection.