So with that in mind we should be cautious about the apparent trend of more US states considering banning Donald Trump from standing in their Republican primaries. But at the end of the day, I suspect, Trump really is on to a loser.
It all kicked off in Colorado a few weeks ago where the state’s Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that as Trump had not just cajoled but had encouraged his – armed – supporters to ensure Congress could not certify the November 2020 election result, this amounted to insurrection.
This decided it that under Section 3 of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment it should rule that thus Trump should and would not be eligible to stand for election to state or federal office.
That relevant section runs:
‘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.'
This amendment was brought in after America’s Civil War to ensure no secessionist politicians could stand for election.
Naturally, as this involved ‘law’ and ‘the law’, there has been, and certainly will be, more argy-bargy about how that section of the 14th Amendment should be interpreted. For example, Trump supporters have argued that the office of President is not mentioned in the section and is thus not included.
They also insist that what I can only describe as ‘the invasion of Congress’ was not an ‘insurrection’ at all but merely a protest meeting. Furthermore, they claim that whatever the ‘protest meeting / insurrection’ was, Trump did not encourage anyone to do anything illegal.
So what is what? You will see why answering such questions is a field day for lawyers on a substantial hourly fee and a grand opportunity for them all to make a great deal of moolah (i.e. ‘. . . but what do we mean by “meaning” and “interpretation”? We cannot proceed, your honours, until the court is entirely clear as to what we are talking about. I contend that . . .’)
Colorado’s decision has now gone to the US Supreme Court, and how the court will rule or whether it will even agree to give a ruling is anyone’s guess. Scooting around the web looking up stuff on this whole matter, I have come across the suggestion that the US Supreme Court might simply take the view that it is not its business to get involved with what is ‘a state matter’.
Given how jealous US states are of what they have of independence that view makes sense. But, note, it is simply just another view. The court might, on the other hand, rule – and thereby echo one of the claims made by Trump – that what Colorado has decided is essentially ‘election interference’ and rule that Trump should be allowed to stand in Colorado’s Republican primary and the US cannot condone ‘election interference’.
And thus more scope for the briefs: ‘What, your honours, do we mean by “interference”. It could be that on the one hand, all things considered and trying to keep a clear head about the matter, that . . .’
. . .
What I find pertinent and telling is that similar lawsuits to have Trump barred from standing in their state’s Republican primary have now also been filed in Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Alaska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Vermont and Virginia.
However, let’s be clear: this only means that ‘lawsuits have been filed’. It does not mean that Trump will not stand in a state’s primary or even that Trump will not be allowed to stand for election in November 2024 in that state. Lawsuits can fail and often do. And even where they succeed, they go to appeal, as it has happened in Colorado, and on appeal it might be thrown out. Thus end of lawsuit.
Now for a second ‘however’: Trump’s camp, which keeps yelping ‘election interference’ and seems blind to what Trump and his team got up to after November 2020 – in my book a textbook case of ‘election interference’ – will be rather more worried than they let on.
They might chunder, that this is all a Democrat conspiracy which has, if they are to be believed, corrupted pretty much the whole US justice system and point out that Colorado is a Democrat state and that all seven of its supreme court judges are Democrat appointees. One-nil to the Trumpists?
No, not quite – MAGA morons, don’t pop the champagne corks yet or, more probably, don’t grab a can of beer quite yet.
The lawsuit was brought not by Colorado Democrats but by Republicans in the state. These are men and women who would most certainly prefer to see a conservative, Republican president but who most certainly do not want to see mendacious rapist and fraud like Trump sitting in the White House. So they are doing their very best to ensure it doesn’t happen.
What the overwhelming political character is of the other 17 states I have listed above, whether Democrat or Republican, I don’t know. But something tells me that whatever lawsuits are brought, they are more likely to be brought by Republicans who will feel just as their fellow Republicans did in Colorado: they want a Republican president but do not want him or her – don’t rule out Nikki Haley – to be that piece of disgraceful dreck Donald J. Trump.
Argentina now has a $9 dollar bill as its president, Brazil had one (and he still has supporters), Hungary has the – democratically elected! – moron Viktor Orban as its prime minster. Poland had a gang of pseudo-democrats in charge until recently, and in The Netherlands one Geert Wilders, a far-right winger to his fingertips came out top in a recent election (but is having a very difficult time finding any other party willing to form a coaltion government with him).
But the US is different: it, its size and its economic clout are enormous. Uniquely in the world, although China might be coming up fast, the US and its political developments affect the rest of the world deeply.
. . .
If, as a neutral, you were to try to evaluate Trump’s achievements when first in office, they are not much. And I stress that such a judgment must be made impartially.
Employment in the US is lower than it was, by quite a bit, than when he left office. He added several trillions to the national debt, and although he tries to make out that he boosted the American economy by referring to the rise in stock prices, his measures were decidedly short-term, and there is always a price to pay by employing such short-term measures.
To make an analogy, I could be a semi-billionaire tomorrow and appear to be very rich indeed if I found banks stupid enough to lend me £500,000 / $500,000. But I would also have an enormous debt around my neck and you can bet the interest rates I would be charged by the lenders would be huge. So how rich would I really be? That is the stunt Trump pulled.
I began this entry with the warnings of Macmillan and Chamberlain. They say of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides that you can experience 18 seasons in 24 hours. Politics might not move as fast, but you might see what I am getting at.
On the face of it Trump is toast: he faces several criminal trials and one civil trial (which will cost him, perhaps $1bn in ‘disgorgement’, i.e. paying back the amount his fraudulent behaviour made him by inflating is worth when applying for loans and getting better rates and tax advantages).
His main tactic is to try to delay all the trials until after the November 2024 election when – he believes – he will be president-designate again and once inaugurated can order – apparently legally – the US Department of Justice to drop all the charges.
Furthermore, if he is found guilty in any of the federal court cases, he can, as president, ‘pardon himself’. To this Brit such a development sounds outlandish and mad, but from what I know that is how the American governmental system is stacked.
The one exception will be the trial he faces in Georgia: as I point out above, US states retain a modicum of independence and they live in a voluntary federal system, and a US president has no power at all to pardon anyone found guilty of a state crime. Only that state’s governor can do that (and once again I must plead that I am astonished that I regard as potential corruption – at a state level – is tolerated).
There was a very good piece in the Washington Post recently by a Robert Kagan (you can find it here) in which he warned that at present, in the lead-up to next November’s election rather too many people are rather too supine about the threat Trump presents to the US.
Pertinently, Kagan is not as Trumpist might care to have it some wishy-washy quasi-socialist Democrat lickspittle but a self-declared neo-conservative and as such his fears echo those of Colorado’s Republicans who brought the lawsuit to get Trump banned from the state’s Republican primary.
Kagan warns that although many might at present be concerned about a ‘Trump dictatorship’, if and when he wins the election and returns to the White House what happened in 1930s Nazi Germany would well take place in the US.
So Kagan, suggests the time to act is now, though he doesn’t suggest quite what to do.
Many in positions of power, he warns, might care to ‘cooperate’ with the new regime and argue that personal survival – Trump has publicly declared he will purge the federal civil service of those who opposed him – is more attractive than being cast into the wilderness.
Kagan also suggests that ‘ordinary’ people will, metaphorically, bend the knee and not make waves as, arguing that is what many Germans did in the 1930s, that however distasteful or even bad the new Trump regime is, it largely leaves their own lives untouched.
Those at present vocal Republicans who proclaim what a disaster Trump would be might, Kagan suggests, pull in their horns after he is elected and, pragmatically also opting for survival over oblivion, begin to keep their mouths tightly shut.
. . .
I can’t deny that I, too, have been fearing the worst: hoping that either Trump doesn’t make it to become the Republican presidential election candidate or, if he does, is beaten at the polls (and that despite the US wacky, wacky, wacky electoral college system).
But then, very recently, I began to see it very differently.
It began when I came across first a claim by the former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger . In it, he says, quite a few people who deal with Trump report that, er, ‘he smells’.
Initially, I just put this down to another piece of ‘ad hominem’ criticism of Trump, although there was something oddly compelling about the piece, given the somewhat unusual claim it made.
Then, more recently, I came across an even more, superficially unlikely, claim that Donald Trump as a matter of course has to wear nappies (US diapers) 24/7.
The explanation given is that since the late 1990s, because of his addiction to Adderall (the ADHAD drug), his consumption of speed and cocaine and not least his full-time diet of junk food – Coke, burgers and French fries – all of which have a laxative effect, especially in conjunction, he has been incontinent.
Hence the smell, which Kinzinger says is combined with various deodorants to try to mask it.
OK, this might strike many as simple malicious gossip. But, oddly, malicious gossip is often true. And I can’t help feeling this claim is also wholly true.
Because of that, I cannot in any way take Trump seriously: basically he is a man in his late 70s who shits in his pants, stinks and talks complete shite around the clock. To describe Trump as ‘not a serious man’ is to do a grave in justice to morons around the world.
So it struck me: Trump will eventually not make it to become the Republican’s presidential candidate, for one reason or another. So, hugely piqued, he will stand as an independent candidate. And at the poll he will fail badly.
Yes, nationally he will get several million votes but he will die a miserable electoral death. And that, dear friends, is what I truly think will happen. Then, finally, I suspect he will die of heart failure, all those burger and fries calories claming their due.
He looks very silly indeed. I assume he believes that by ‘bronzing’ his face he would look quite as old but, Donny, it ain’t working.
Why his staff don’t diplomatically warn him what a complete prat he looks is also a puzzle.
Oh well. Do I care? What do you think?
