Also POLITICO comes to the conclusion they’ll probably keep him. Trump on the ballot I mean. But I do not feel relaxed at all, because the arguments in defense of Trump are not substantial “he did not engage in insurrection” but strictly technical “The President is an officer in the United States not under the United States” “Does Section 3 apply or not to the Presidential election?” “Only appointed Officers, not elected Officers, must be banned under section three, the language says ‘from holding office NOT from running for Office’ ” and there you understand they want to save Trump. I mean it was appalling the way they avoided the facts happened on January 6 and whether Trump was responsible for them (for me he was). There are people in jail, who are not running for Office, with sentences up to 22 years for Capitol Riot, see the Proud Boys. As POLITICO coldly noticed it took a full hour of technical dissection of what’s an officer what’s not before a Judge asked Trump’s lawyer Mitchell whether he thinks Jan 6 was an insurrection or not, he almost told Mitchell “Please say No” and Mitchell, tentatively, said “No, it was hineous, violent but not an insurrection”.
There’s something cowardly in this avoiding the facts and focusing on the technical details, there may be a valid reason in avoiding a situation where each State even specifically one only or very few State Officers as the State Secretary or few local Judges without trial declare a guy they don’t like an insurrectionist, Judge Gorsuch said the whole thing of barring Trump as Colorado ruled may bring to a cascade of politicians barred from office on the logic of few people, quite arbitrarily, and not based on a full scale Congress’s impeachment or a full scale normal trial. So technically they may be right, but why didn’t they do the trial and the impeachment? Why do they do these half-baked things? Almost to keep the situation tense on purpose.
It was even hinted that Trump, after all, may have engaged in insurrection for real but a single State a bunch of State Officers cannot be given the authority to ban him from the ballot so easily as if he were 16 year old or born abroad – in those cases he cannot be on the ballot automatically – the insurrectionist clause instead is not so easy to give to self-interpretation, cannot be declared self-evident as to be 16 or born abroad. “What’s an insurrection?” is a different question than “What’s to be 16?” to be 16 is to be 16, but to be an insurrectionist is open to debate and wider interpretation. It may change from State to State.
They’re gonna keep him. His wild tweets are not self evident for the Judges. These Judges.
So, let’s brace ourselves for an ambiguous future, no mention of Jan6 convictions, of Trump supporters ended up in jail, playing with the fire of the insurrection-non-insurrection. Perhaps they are even right. But why didn’t they do the trial for Jan 6? They’ll do it. But this forecast ruling is a bit like this. I mean I understand they don’t want State Secretaries to start barring people from office at will, like nothing, but for me the arguments used were too technical to be satisfactory, a method perhaps to run away from the facts happened between November 4 2020 and Jan 6 2021. I understand there was no proper trial, but I wouldn’t go with Trump again. I mean they may be right, technically, but practically?