A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
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To Disqualify or Not Disqualify Trump? |
By David Corn December 23, 2023 |
Donald Trump at a rally in Reno, Nevada, on December 17, 2023. Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP |
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The decision this past week of the Colorado state supreme court to boot Donald Trump off the Republican presidential primary ballot in the Centennial State has triggered political chaos, which could well become constitutional chaos. Trump has declared he will appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court. Meanwhile, similar efforts to disqualify him are under way in other states—including the swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin—and additional challenges are expected to pop up elsewhere. How this is settled could determine whether a demagogue with authoritarian desires who has increasingly embraced fascistic language could regain the keys to the White House.
As we all know by now, Section Three of the 14th Amendment bars any officer of the United States who has sworn to support the Constitution but has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion… or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” from holding “any office, civil or military, under the United States.” That seems rather clear. But the legal case hasn’t been. The Colorado high court overruled a lower court decision that had prevented Trump from being cast off the state ballot. Its 133-page decision focused on a host of issues, notably whether this clause actually applies to a president and the office of the presidency. The lower court said it didn’t. The Colorado supremes said it did. Both courts, though, agreed on a key principle: Trump engaged in insurrection. Despite the legal wrangling underway, it’s worth reiterating this: Trump engaged in insurrection. Here are some passages from the decision:
We conclude that the foregoing evidence, the great bulk of which was undisputed at trial, established that President Trump engaged in insurrection. President Trump’s direct and express efforts, over several months, exhorting his supporters to march to the Capitol to prevent what he falsely characterized as an alleged fraud on the people of this country were indisputably overt and voluntary. Moreover, the evidence amply showed that President Trump undertook all these actions to aid and further a common unlawful purpose that he himself conceived and set in motion: prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election and stop the peaceful transfer of power…
As our detailed recitation of the evidence shows, President Trump did not merely incite the insurrection. Even when the siege on the Capitol was fully underway, he continued to support it by repeatedly demanding that Vice President Pence refuse to perform his constitutional duty and by calling Senators to persuade them to stop the counting of electoral votes. These actions constituted overt, voluntary, and direct participation in the insurrection. Moreover, the record amply demonstrates that President Trump fully intended to—and did—aid or further the insurrectionists’ common unlawful purpose of preventing the peaceful transfer of power in this country. He exhorted them to fight to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election. He personally took action to try to stop the certification. And for many hours, he and his supporters succeeded in halting that process. It is rather stunning that a court has issued such a stark declaration: a US president tried to overthrow constitutional government.
This decision has sparked a new challenge for the American system. It seems once again likely that the Supreme Court will play a significant role in the outcome of a presidential election. Bush v. Gore was divisive and widely seen as a partisan ruling. Now what will SCOTUS do? Affirming this decision in Colorado—and possibly subsequent disqualifications in other states—would cause a political firestorm that Trump and his cult will exploit to the max. Violence is a distinct possibility. Reversing the Colorado ruling, however, could be regarded by many Americans as a sop to Trump from justices he appointed and justices drowning in a sea of conflicts of interest (whether or not there’s a direct conflict in this case because Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni, was an advocate of overturning the election). Either way, one side will shout that the system is rigged.
Speculation regarding the Supreme Court’s response will run rampant until it acts. Is it conceivable the court would take a pass on this? Can it let different states end up with different outcomes—rulings in favor of Trump’s disqualifications in some states, rulings against it in others? Lawyers, pundits, and perhaps your relatives and close friends will be slicing this controversy in many ways. We’re in a sort of political multiverse and in for a wild ride.
What surprised me was that the Colorado decision did not mention the second Trump impeachment. Part of the squabbling over 14th/3 concerns who gets to say whether what Trump did was insurrection. One dissenting justice in the four-to-three Colorado decision noted that Trump must be found guilty of the crime of insurrection before being removed from the ballot. Yet that second impeachment—though Trump was not convicted—ended with an amazing judgement: A bipartisan majority of senators declared that Trump had purposefully fostered an insurrection. That was the single count of the impeachment. Fifty-seven senators, including seven Republicans, voted to convict Trump. This was a proclamation he had propelled the January 6 assault and bore responsibility for it.
This fundamental fact often gets lost in the wash. After all, Trump got off because the Senate did not muster the 67 votes needed to win an impeachment conviction. Yet the majority approved the damning narrative. Who says Trump sparked an insurrection? The US Senate did. That should have had a larger impact on the national discourse. But in an impeachment proceeding—like in many things—winning (or not losing) is everything.
This reminds me of another development that has not registered fully within our deeply divided national conversation. In the Georgia RICO prosecution that indicted Trump and 18 others for allegedly forming a “criminal racketeering enterprise” to “unlawfully change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election,” three of Trump’s legal advisers have pleaded guilty: Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell, and Jenna Ellis. Ponder that for a moment. Three of Trump’s attorneys have acknowledged that crimes were committed during the Trump-inspired and -led campaign to overturn the election results. This is not the liberal media making such a declaration.
Still, the Republican Party and tens of millions of its voters continue to accept Trump and his phony Big Lie rants, as he moves toward the 2024 presidential election. It’s hard to process such detached-from-reality absurdity.
I admit that I am somewhat queasy about letting a small number of jurists possibly determine the outcome of a presidential election. Certainly, insurrectionists deserve punishment—at least, they should not be allowed to return to the scene of the crime as president once again. And preventing the restoration of Trump, now ever-more the autocrat (or fascist), appears necessary to safeguard the republic. Still, the best treatment would be for the body politic, not a handful of judges, to reject the pathogen of Trumpism.
Trump tried to foment a coup to retain power, and this included encouraging (and not stopping) a violent attack on the US Capitol. Yet because the GOP and right-wing media have embraced and amplified Trump’s disinformation and because the Republican base has bought the lies, this elemental narrative is not a consensus position. Thus, Trump has become a one-man stress test for American democracy. The Constitution contains provisions designed to confront such a danger. But they are far from fool-proof. Most Republican senators, in the grip of the political factionalism the founders so feared, declined to convict him on impeachment. And now 14th/3 is being hotly contested in a manner that will probably spark political turmoil. What all this shows is that our system is ill-equipped to confront such a profound threat. The coming months may well demonstrate whether our republic can hold. Happy New Year.
Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com. |
Our Land Holiday Logistics |
First off, my apologies. Last month, at the end of a successful and fun Zoom get-together with Our Land premium subscribers, I said I would try to hold another one this month. Well, time flies. Especially during holiday season when a horrific war rages overseas and democracy at home is imperiled. So there was no online shindig in December. But I’m going to aim for one next month. I’ll keep you posted. These hoe-downs are only open to those of you who kick in a few bucks a month to get the full version of this newsletter—and who, by doing so, keep this entire endeavor afloat. So if you’re not a premium subscriber and want to join us to hash out the news of the new year—or vent about the world!—sign up now. A reminder: If you don’t want to read the complete edition of Our Land, you don’t have to. But if you join this elite corps of subscribers, you will get access to more Our Land content, including cultural reviews and recommendations, the interactive letters-to-the-editor section, the Dumbass Comment of the Week feature, and, best of all, MoxieCam™—and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you are helping to keep the lights on at Our Land.
As for the next few weeks, I’ll be doing some traveling, and key members of the Our Land crew will be taking breaks. Consequently, our publishing schedule will be irregular this coming fortnight. I will have to see who’s around and when. But shortly after New Year’s we will be back in full swing. I thank all of you for spending 2023 with us. There have been some very tough moments. I expect 2024 will bring the same. But I hope Our Land helps you process all that whirls about us. I know writing this newsletter does so for me.
Special thanks to the Our Land team for getting us through 2023: Dan Schulman, Dylan DiSalvio, Daniel King, Rob Pjetri, Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, Robert Wise, Emily White, Amber Hewins, and Moxie. Speaking of Moxie, here’s a special holiday edition of MoxieCam™ available to all. |
“You want me to wish everyone a Happy New Year?” “Yes, Moxie.”
“Even people who are mean?” “It’s customary this time of year to include all in such sentiments.” “Even people who don’t have dogs?” “Even them.” “If you insist…Happy New Year to… to everybody.” “Did you really mean that, Moxie.” “Of course. You know dogs can never be insincere.” |
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Dumbass Comment of the Week |
For the second week in a row, President Joe Biden caught the attention of the judges. When he appeared on Conan O’Brien’s podcast, the funnyman asked the president which political figures “really stand out as an incredible leader.” Biden cited Golda Meir, the former Israeli prime minister, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, former GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel, and Jimmy Carter, who he described as “totally decent.” He also added both George Bushes. “They were both decent, honorable men,” Biden said.
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Really? George H.W. Bush ran what was widely derided as a sleazy campaign against Michael Dukakis in 1988. As for Bush the Younger, he deployed lies and falsehoods to guide the United States into the Iraq War, which was a catastrophic failure. His prevarications and misrepresentations led to a conflagration in which several thousand American soldiers lost their lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed.
The bond among those who reach the White House is tight—with one notable exception. It’s a clubby group. Still, there was nothing honorable or decent about the most consequential action of W’s presidency. Biden knows that.
It's long been obvious that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sees his job in Congress as a steppingstone to another career…as an insult comic. This guy would rather do stand-up than legislate. Sometimes it seems he’s auditioning to get his own Netflix special. No surprise, he’s not nearly as funny as he thinks. At a recent gathering of Turning Point USA, the pro-Trump outfit, Cruz tried so hard—and pathetically—to emulate a comedian:
The left is so bad. They’re so unhappy. They’re so pissed off. And by the way, if you were a liberal woman and you had to sleep with those weenies, you’d be pissed, too. |
He needs to work on his material.
I know we’re all tired of Rep. Jim Jordan’s piddle-paddle about…well, everything. After the Colorado Supreme Court decision, he wailed:
The president was put on trial and found not guilty by the United States Senate when the Democrats did their second crazy impeachment of him before. But the scariest thing of all…is the escalation with what the left will do to try to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. First it was they spied on his campaign. Then it was the Mueller investigation. Then it was the impeachment. Then it was raiding his home. Then it was indicting him in four different locations. |
There’s so much wrong with these remarks. For one, special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed by a Republican Justice Department official. But this guy claims to be worried about political “escalation,” though he enthusiastically assisted Trump’s covert scheme to stay in office and helped Trump spread the Big Lie that incited the January 6 insurrectionist riot. He’s more hypocritical than any pot that calls a kettle black.
Trump henchman Stephen Miller was on the rampage this week. On the question of immigration, he railed,
We are being conquered. This is a complete resettlement of America in real time. It took hundreds of years…to slowly build everything we have. And now we have millions of people coming in from different cultures and different ways of living and different belief systems. They’re going to take those belief systems with them to America. So a generation from now…people will not know the country they are living in. These consequences are permanent. Unless there is massive, large-scale deportation by the millions, it will be irrevocable.
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Rounding up millions. Hard to envision that without camps. ‘Nuf said.
The winner this week is a veteran of batcrap craziness, but someone who has generally been out of the game for years. It was surprising to see her back in the mix, but not surprising to witness her full display of hatred and extremism. Ladies and gentlemen, we welcome back to the Right-wing Shop of Horrors, former GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann:
It's time that Gaza ends. The two million people who live there, they are clever assassins. They need to be removed from that land. That land needs to be turned into a national park. |
Bachmann, a failed GOP presidential candidate in 2012, is a dean at Regent University, the Christian institution founded by Pat Robertson, noted purveyor of an antisemitic conspiracy theories. Amid all the controversy stirred up by the response of college administrations to rhetoric on campuses related to the Hamas-Israel war, here is a clear-cut example of a statement calling for genocide. Yet I bet Bachmann manages to keep her job.
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In response to my recent piece asking if the two-state solution is no longer possible, readers had thoughts.
D.R. Cooley emailed: This is dead. Neither Hamas nor Israel wants it. Israel supported Hamas for a long time due to opposing the two-state solution. This makes Israel half to blame for the October 7 attack.
Hamas is responsible for the October 7 massacre. But the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is responsible for the government’s long-term policy of propping up Hamas to split the Palestinians and undermine any negotiations for a two-state solution. In terms of addressing the fundamental Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Netanyahu has done nothing. In fact, he has exacerbated the problem. Beyond the security failures that led to 10/7, Netanyahu and his crowd ought to face a reckoning for this failure.
Leonard Wolf wrote: The fundamentalists on different sides always have more in common than they will admit.
It is notable that both Hamas and far-right Israeli extremists oppose a two-state solution. They each want this small stretch of land just for themselves. Palestinians and Israelis must find a path forward without these radical fundamentalists. That’s a tough task, especially for the Palestinians, as Gaza is annihilated, and they face dislocation, disease, starvation, and other deprivations. Richard Middleton shared this:
As you rightly say, neither side in the present conflict has expressed any clear vision of what a future Israeli-Palestine peace accord might look like. Dahlia Scheindlin’s recommendation of a confederated solution for Israel and Palestine therefore seems very attractive. It is, of course, consistent with what the Balfour Declaration envisaged in 1917 for political arrangements after the end of the British Mandate. But those details were never spelled out, Israel declared statehood in 1948, and subsequently the region has experienced 75 years of chaos. Perhaps there is now a chance to get this right, but it’s hard to be optimistic. Unfortunately, the US no longer has a reputation as an honest broker in these negotiations, or even, in the current political polarization, as a reliable ally. But that has probably always been the case to some extent. Who can bring about Scheindlin’s solution—or any solution?
Many readers sent in notes of appreciation for my personal send-off for Norman Lear: Frances Davis wrote:
I have been brought to tears after reading your very special tribute to Norman Lear, everybody's hero. Thank you so very much for putting it "out there." Harvey Berman emailed: Thank you for that exquisite memorial. It touched me deeply and brought a smile and a tear at the same time. That’s all due to Norman. The issue on artificial intelligence seemed to scare readers, as it should. Gerard Canaugh shared this:
Thank you for explaining the risks of an AI infrastructure that has no federal or international guardrails. I’m 76 and concerned about the range of possible effects of an uncontrolled AI. I fear a symbiotic relationship among oligarchs here in the US in which they dictate the future to the federal government. A mirror image of the Putin model. Paul Roden voiced a similar concern with cinematic references:
All I can think of regarding artificial intelligence is HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, when HAL won't open the pod door for Dave, after killing the other astronaut and the scientists/astronauts in hibernation on board. Or the 1970s film, Colossus: The Forbin Project, in which two super computers, one from the US and the other from the USSR, connect and take over the world. ("This is the voice of World Control.") A nightmare, doomsday, dystopian, and apocalyptic vision. Either we have a way to control AI, a kill switch, or some sort of check and balance, or it will kill us. AI is even more frightening to me then Trump or Gilead and the commanders from The Handmaid's Tale.
Mary Bristow reached for another cultural reference: Why does this make me think that someone needs to set all these tech bros down and make them read Frankenstein? Though it’s probably too late for us, the genie is out of the bottle, Pandora’s box is wide open, and the monster is loose.
It’s obvious we cannot count on the tech bros, no matter what they read. Besides, after reading Frankenstein, they would probably think, “Let’s find a way to do that!” Which reminds me of an all-time great bit: |
Read Recent Issues of Our Land |
December 19, 2023: A (cracked) Christmas playlist; the chances of Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley; the return of Brad Parscale; and more.
December 16, 2023: Donald Trump, rubber, and glue; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Brenden Dilley); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
December 12, 2023: Who controls AI?; Nyad is a Rocky for the olds; Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Dave Alvin explore the borderland; and more.
December 9, 2023: Norman Lear: “I love liberty”; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Nikki Haley); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
December 5, 2023: Is a two-state solution still possible?: Less Than Zero is far from nothing; RIP, Shane MacGowan; and more.
December 2, 2023: It’s not too late for a Kissinger reckoning; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Linda Yaccarino); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
November 28, 2023: Nikki Haley’s idiotic proposal; Mike Johnson’s spiritual warfare; Dumb Money is a smart pick; a Laura Cantrell duet with Steve Earle; and more.
November 21, 2023: The tragic indifference of “no ceasefire”; a Thanksgiving time-out; David Fincher’s silent Killer; Claire Lynch rides an “Empty Train”; and more.
November 18, 2023: Is it anti-Christian to criticize Speaker Mike Johnson?; the congressional ethics report on George Santos; a bizarre Albania-Russia-GOP caper; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Elon Musk); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™’ and more.
November 14, 2023: The Money Kings and Zionism, antisemitism, and conspiracy theories; the GOP’s minority rule; Oisin Leech’s “October Sun”; and more.
November 11, 2023: Donald Trump and revenge: a love atory; the GOP and minority rule on abortion; Dumbass Comment of the Week; the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
November 7, 2023: Can we doomscroll to peace in the Middle East; Mike Johnson in the Holy Land; “Now and Then” more Lennon than Beatles; the meta rock world of Daisy Jones & the Six; and more. |
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Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com. |
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