A Supreme Court With Common Sense Would Disqualify Trump
Constitutional law professor Michael Gerhardt tells The New Abnormal that a plain reading of the 14th Amendment would deny Donald Trump’s bid to be president again.
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Constitutional law professor Michael Gerhardt tells The New Abnormal that a common sense reading of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution would render Donald Trump ineligible to become president again after inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“Section three of the 14th Amendment provides, and I’m paraphrasing, ‘any officers, civil or otherwise of the United States, who have engaged in incitement or rebellion are rendered ineligible to take another oath of office for some federal position,’” he told The New Abnormal’s co-host Danielle Moodie. “According to the real world constitution, section three of the 14th Amendment... can reasonably be read as precluding Donald Trump from running for the presidency.”
“There’s a video of Trump, there’s the Jan. 6 committee findings regarding Trump, numerous inside accounts about Donald Trump, all of which confirm that on Jan. 6 he was trying to wage an effort to keep Congress from its final certification of the 2020 presidential election—plainly interfering with the congressional process and plainly interfering with the constitutional process for selecting a president,” he said.
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However, Gerhardt agreed with Moodie that given the number of conservative justices on the bench, a decision against Trump is unlikely.
“As a realist, I don’t have any confidence, or I share your lack of confidence, that the Supreme Court will reach a so-called principle decision on this. I think the Supreme Court will likely find a way either to misread the original meaning or to ignore the plain language and reach a result that they and their constituents, they shouldn’t have constituents, prefer.”
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