Donald Trump gestures to supporters after telling them to march on the US Capitol to “Stop the Steal”, January 6, 2021 (Jim Bourg/Reuters)
I joined Poland’s TVP World on Monday to analyze two developing stories: legal attempts to remove Donald Trump from State ballots in the 2024 Presidential election, and the launch of Israel’s ground offensive into Gaza.
The other participant is political commentator Stefan Włodarczyk.
Watch from 15:13
Evaluating the cases in Colorado and Minnesota, I explain the legal basis for the possible disqualification of Trump: applying the “insurrection clause” of the 14th Amendment over his coup attempt and the Capitol Attack of January 6, 2021.
I note the likely difficulties for the plaintiffs in getting the ban before the November 2024 general election, let alone the Republican primaries.
While I and many others believe Trump did incite violence to stay in office, that has not yet been legally established in a trial culminating in his conviction.
However, I note that this does not remove the necessity to pursue these cases as Trump faces four trials, with a total of 91 felony charges, in 2024.
If you do not have these trials, then you allow that former President — Donald Trump — to escape accountability. And that’s something no democracy should countenance because no one is above the law.
And on Israel-Gaza:
There is a contest between continuing the expanded Israeli bombing and the ground offensive v. getting humanitarian aid across the Gaza Strip.
Not only is that contest about saving lives. If you do not get that aid into Gaza, you will not separate civilians from Hamas and their deadly rule.
“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard…..We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.” https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial
” I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical” Thomas Jefferson
https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/a-little-rebellionquotation/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/us/politics/biden-trump-2024-poll.html
“The results show Mr. Biden losing to Mr. Trump, his likeliest Republican rival, by margins of four to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden is ahead only in Wisconsin, by two percentage points, the poll found…..Across the six battlegrounds — all of which Mr. Biden carried in 2020 — the president trails by an average of 48 to 44 percent.”