Rick Wilson is outlining a depressing, but all too plausible scenario for 2024. As you know, I find it highly credible that the 14th Amendment can be invoked to remove Donald Trump from the ballot due to his participation in the January 6 Insurrection. I believe that Laurence Tribe and J. Michael Luttig and others have analyzed that legal issue meticulously and come up with the right answer, that Trump is constitutionally barred from being on the ballot.
However, Rick Wilson has a piece up wherein he describes the GOP shortstopping that process, in essence. You may recall that Professor Tribe said that he believed that the matter would be fast tracked through state and appellate courts and end up at the Supreme Court level before the July, 2024 convention. But what if Trump is already the nominee before the convention?
It’s not impossible that could happen. He is leading substantially. And the GOP can’t wrest itself free from him. There’s a suicide pact between Trump and the Republican party. Here’s how Rick Wilson sees it.
I worry daily that too many Democrats are placing too many of their hopes in the hands of Jack Smith, Fani Wills, Alvin Bragg, et al. These trials are richly deserved and a sign that at least some remnant of the rule of law still obtains, but none of them are slam-dunk, home-run, go-directly-to-jail miracles.
Not. One.
The airwaves are filled with legal analysis of the fell portents of every filing for Trump, but surprisingly little recognition that it only takes one sleeper MAGA person on one of these juries to result in a hung jury or an acquittal or for one mistake in court for the tide to turn away from justice and towards Trump.
There seems to be little recognition that the legal system can get slowed down, thrown off track, and just not turn out the way Trump richly deserves. Too many people believe Trump will be in jail in 2024, and too few think he might walk from any of these cases and underestimate the cascade effect, both legally and politically, of what will happen to the other cases when he does.
Finally, as Trump evolves from the likely nominee to the presumptive nominee, expect the Republican Party to ditch the convention rules and name him the official GOP nominee as early as March of next year. It’s one more layer of legal armor. At that point, my confidence in the Department of Justice to hold the line diminishes rapidly.
Now that is depressing but I can’t argue with any of it. It is very likely that things can go down that way. And never forget, ALL of this arises from one seminal cause and that is that there is no leadership in the Republican party right now.
There was a time when most of the elected GOP members in Washington weren’t members of the Trump Cult. In the House, about 50 made noise, threw their political feces like rabid zoo animals and went on Fox to bleat and squeal. In the Senate, it was a dozen or so.
Now? The lunatics are utterly in control of the House Asylum. Kevin McCarthy gamely clings to power by auctioning off another slice of his soul every day to feed the endless maw of the grifters, madmen, criminals, degenerates, and authoritarians who allow him to hold the title of Speaker but none of its power.
Whether you love or hate him for it, Mitch McConnell’s long run as one of the most effective Senate leaders, in or out of the majority, is over. McConnell’s increasingly evident health problems have stirred up the restive post-conservative, pro-Trump Senate GOP caucus into a frenzy, as Mike Lee, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, and Rick Scott begin an obvious push for a secret caucus vote to replace him. The Logan Roy of the Senate isn’t done yet, but his replacements will not; as he famously said, “Be serious people.”
That is the state of play, realistically. You’ve got the shards of the Republican party, strewn on the floor, MAGA is alive and well, Trump is leading the other wanna bees by a substantial margin and if we know one thing to be true, what’s left of the GOP will rally behind Trump. It’s very plausible that Ronna McDaniel and whatever powers that be will decide to ditch the rules, as Rick Wilson suggests, and just announce Trump the nominee.
Then the issue becomes, is the Supreme Court going to remove the GOP nominee from the ticket? That’s a different legal issue than not allowing Trump on the ticket. This is quite a curve ball. And the answer is, I don’t know. This is yet a fresh issue for the Constitutional scholars to decide. I guess the legal issue then becomes, “whether the presidential nominee for one of the two major parties can be barred by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and removed from the ticket?” Again, this is a case of first impression, like whether the Secret Service would accompany Trump in the slammer, if he’s convicted and sentenced. Nobody knows. There’s nothing in the law to address this.
And if Trump is convicted in at least one case, then what happens to time served? Deferred until after the election? I guess we’re going to find out.
The incumbent president could indeed be running for reelection against a convicted criminal who tried to stay in power by overthrowing the government. This could in fact happen. Because the GOP will set it up to happen.
This has always been the GOP’s show. They own this. From the get go, this has been a farce which the Republicans have directed and produced. Trump could never have gotten as far as he did but for the fact that he’s got one of the two major political parties in this country enabling him.
And the GOP is fine with enabling a venal madman, who tried to tear down democracy before and who vows to do that very thing if and when he could get back in the White House.
The money people once upon a time had a role in moderating the GOP. After 2016, they lost that power absolutely and finally. They’re not coming to save America from Trump, either. They’ll join the political and elected class and open their bank accounts to Trump until he bleeds them into desiccated husks.
The less said about Ronna McDaniel and the moribund Republican apparatus, the better. The headquarters on C Street might as well have “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” on the lintel.
Ronna will happily give Trump the nomination early. She’s been so far in over her head for so long that she is clueless about how to do anything but dance at the end of the mango mobster’s strings.
As I’ve said, this is depressing but nothing said in this piece is implausible or far fetched. It could all happen exactly the way it’s laid out.
Or, as is always the case, some variation of what’s laid out here could happen. Remember, we’ve got an incredibly complex situation here with many variables. By the same token, Trump could have a stroke tomorrow and be carried off the golf course. That, too, is plausible.
We can’t predict what will happen, we’re just going to have to live it. But this is a new wrinkle.
What difference does it make if he’s the nominee or just a candidate?
If he’s INELIGIBLE to run because of the 14thA, I don’t understand the difference.
Is it just what you think SCOTUS would do?
Considering 30% of the population is MAGA, and dare I estimate that in Florida and Georgia the figure is closer to 40%, the chances of not getting a MAGAt on the juries is slim to none…..it will happen. (not to mention the in the can “judge” in Florida)
The only case that has a chance is in DC, which coincidentally is the one which concerns the 14th amendment, but again, though much less of a chance, who’s to say a MAGAt won’t slip into that jury.
The Florida and Georgia cases are a waste of time and resources…..though they are bleeding Trump-O’s war chest dry. The only hope for justice is DC and the 14th amendment. If there is no conviction for responsibility for January 6th the 14th amendment will have no basis for implementation, though a conviction is not necessary to invoke it, it sadly, it will never happen.
I think the timing of his nomination is irrelevant. The courts will simply consider the lawsuits against the evidence that P01135809 engaged in and provided comfort to people involved in the insurrection, ignoring the politics. The Colorado lawsuit has a good chance of getting through the appeals process before the currently scheduled July convention. And by that time Fulton County may well have converted the indicted prisoner into a convicted one, and put him out of circulation for a very long time. If the GOP still wants to nominate a convicted felon who has been declared unqualified for public office and is serving a life sentence for racketeering, the more power to them.
Well, there is the fact that who can and cannot appear on a state’s election ballot is up to the Secretary of State of EACH INDIVIDUAL STATE. If the SoS of California rules that Trump is ineligible to qualify under California law to appear on the ballot, there is NOTHING the GOP or Congress or the Supreme Court can do (not unless we want to see all these usual advocates of “states’ rights” on topics they like–such as abortion–put their absolute hypocrisy on display for the whole world to see).
We saw this not that long ago. Back in 1960, the voters in several Southern states (AL, GA, LA, MS) cast their ballots not for a Democratic or Republican candidate but rather individual electors (for the Electoral College). In AL, 6 of the 11 electors were “unpledged Democrats” and they ended up casting their electoral votes for Harry Byrd while the other 5 “pledged Democrats” cast their votes for JFK. In GA, all 12 electors were pledged to vote for JFK. In LA, all 10 electors cast their votes for JFK but roughly 1/5 of all votes were for “unpledged” electors (and there was even a movement to get some or all of the electors pledged to JFK to vote instead for Nixon). In MS, the “unpledged” electors won (with nearly 40% of the total vote, compared to just over 36% for the “pledged” Democratic electors and nearly 25% for the “pledged” Republican electors) so the state’s 8 electoral votes went to Harry Byrd. (Byrd, it should be noted, had never sought any votes or electors from any state.) It basically was up to the Secretaries of State (or whoever the chief election official was) of these states that had the voters choose specific electors rather than candidates. (Currently in AL–at least–primary voters choose a candidate and vote for a certain number of delegates to the convention but in the general election, the vote is for the presidential and vice-presidential candidate rather than electors although each party selects a slate of electors pledged to vote for the candidate of the party that receives the largest number of votes.)
I like to see the s.c. put their hypocrisy up on display for all to see. It might put more weight behind the necessity of fixing what Yertle broke.
Let us also admit that the feckless AG Merrick Garland bears some responsibility in this. If he’d gotten off his a$$ sooner, this could have started three years sooner and we wouldn’t be in the time crunch we are.
Rick Wilson may have forsaken the party but he will always be a Republican at heart. More accurately, he’ll always be anti-Democrat. He and his fellow never-Trumpers never miss a chance to bash Democrats. He claims the only reason Biden won in 2020 is because of the work the Lincoln Project did; that, if it hadn’t been for them, Trump would’ve won again and taken the Senate and the House with him. He claims that the only reason the red wave of 2022 turned out to be a red trickle is because of him and his pals.
It’s bullshit.
And so is this. He’s desperate for Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Fani Willis and, above all, Jack Smith, to fail. Because, if any of them win, it will prove that Democrats didn’t need The Lincoln Project or The Enemies List to pull off a win.
He ignores the fact that Fani Willis is so far 2-0. She’s presented her case to two Georgia grand juries with Georgia jurors and won everything she wanted from both of them. The trials will be drawing on the same Georgia populations for their jurors.
Moreover, as commenters have pointed out above, nomination does NOT override the 14th Amendment and Wilson surely knows this so he’s gaslighting.
Rick Wilson is using the Republican strategist’s playbook – scare your audience. That’s what this rant is really all about.
Incidentally, Politizoom printed a story about the 14th Amendment on February 2, 2021, followed by an updated article on March 19, 2021. Both articles came to the same conclusion as Professor Lawrence Tribe and Judge Michael Luttig because we at Politizoom are that good!
Thank you Michelle! Like I always say, I learn something new here all the time!
The cases most likely to succeed are the ones in GA,and D. C. The District has a lot of young liberals in what the Trump cultists call the Deep State: In other words,career civil service staffers who go in and do their job every day,making sure passports are issued, air traffic controllers get paid so planes don’t crash into each other, handle payments to seniors and doctors who take Medicare and Medicaid, etc. And there are a lot of PoC who.loathe Trump, the second coming of Simon Legree. Gonna be a lot harder for a,latent Grumpy to get onto that jury.
As for GA, two.words:Ahmad WpAubery. He was the jogger murdered by the father and son while a neighbor stood around watching and helping. I would have bet hard cash that it’d be a hung jury at best but all three were found guilty, the exact opposite of the George Zimmerman trial.where one Republican woman (a gun owner and wife of a right-wing Republican lawyer) bullied the others into finding him not guilty because she was prepared to sit there until the winter Olympics were held in hell. Why do I suspect she voted for DeSaster and loves him?
But unlike Zimmerman, these three murderers are never getting out of jail, and the prosecutor is likely facing charges for her role in the cover-up. A lot has changed in GA, while FL.has slid further down the hole.
I don’t really care for Rick Wilson. He just rubs me the wrong way. But I respect what he has to say. And he’s right. I’m sad to say that between Trump, big business and Ronna it’s hard to pick the biggest criminal. Oh Donnie has longest running sewed up so don’t worry about that. I wouldn’t want people thinking I was giving Cheeto a pass on anything. We have a problem. Donald Trump and the Republican Party. I seen on morning Joe that one of the guest said if you can get Trump out of the way that there’s a good chance that the republicans won’t be a party much longer. I can see that. This all hinges on stopping Trump. We did it in 2020.
I don’t see how a party nomination can prevent exercise of the 14 th amendment. The party is not the arbiter of what is or os not constitutional. And, I believe in this case, neither is the Supreme Court. Trump doesn’t even have to be convicted in a court. By his own mouth and with plenty of documentation, he has engaged in both sedition and inciting insurrection. The evidence could not be more clear. . The constitution says anyone who has done these things, not who has been convicted of doing them. this kind of hair splitting by “legal experts” is nothing less than what the Jews that Jesus condemned were doing with their interpretations of the laws given by Moses. It is exactly what Jesus meant when he says, as Matthew 23:24 records “Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” Scholars and politicians are so scared of setting some kind of precedent that they think might affect their political side down the road. And so they become contortionists to protect themselves and let the real culprits continue to get away with all kinds of political atrocities. It’s what got the Pharisees in trouble, and what continues to hamstring the U.S. from making the kind of progress we could have done if we had simply paid attention to the words of the founders and others later on.