Opinion | If Trump Is Not an Insurrectionist, What Is He?
www.nytimes.com
The former president is just the man the 14th amendment envisioned barring from office.

Trump sought and actively tried to subvert constitutional government and overturn the results of the presidential election. And what he could not do through the arcane rules and procedures of the Electoral College, he tried to do through the threat of brute force, carried out by an actual mob.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3612·
    10 months ago

    If the antecedent component of a conditional statement is not true, then the consequent component of that conditional statement is effectively meaningless, and not logically relevant.

    I am so fucking sick of every fucking mainstream media outlet bending over backwards to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. Doing so is willful negligence, plain and simple.

      • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
        106·
        10 months ago

        In an age where most people just read headlines, starting one with “he’s not an insurrectionist” is a stupid way to talk about it. Trump is clearly guilty and prosecution hinges on a stacked Supreme Court that will probably upturn democracy and bring about a serious dark period in American history. Legitimate threats of concentration camps at the border and vastly intolerant police enforcing his every decree (like let the capital riots go nuts and do nothing) are just the start.

        This is fucking stupid, regardless of the content. It is time to be more forward: Trump is America’s Hitler and will lead America to the same ruination as all other fascist/populist leaders.

        • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
          71·
          10 months ago

          Frankly, I disagree. Reading only the headline is one thing but there is also an apparent lack of reading comprehension.

          It’s clear in just the title that the author questions how Trump’s behaviour leading up to Jan 6th can be described as anything besides “insurrectionist”. I really had no reason to be surprised that the body of the opinion piece covers why Trump’s actions are clearly would disqualify him from the ballot, and also the supreme court’s involvement weighing in on how it gets enforced and by whom.

    • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
      31·
      10 months ago

      Beware whenever the Alt-Right makes a “mistake” that works in their favor - it is most often no accident, from that crowd that values “winning” over all other considerations - even (especially it sometimes seems) morality?

      As a famous YouTube video “The Alt-Right Playbook: Control the Conversation” mentioned, bad arguments are bait for liberals to get to talking about what the person offering those want them to be talking about. Whether this journalist merely was “negligent” towards best reporting practices vs. outright hostile to them, I no longer care b/c functionally they make no difference.

    • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
      32·
      10 months ago

      that conditional statement

      You’re gonna want to read through to the punctuation marks on the ends of sentences, they’re pretty important sometimes, like if you’re trying to tell whether an author is making a statement (“.” and “!”, typically) or asking a question (“?”).

  • pl_woah@lemmy.ml
    5·
    10 months ago

    The one possible out is that he hasn’t been completely convicted of the crimes involved yet. I really hope he is soon. It worries me that he might get some court to say “no, he’s not been charged, put him back on the ballot”, and then he is, and then they go “no double jeopardy on taking him off the ballot, we went over this”

  • Melllvar@startrek.websiteEnglish
    61·
    10 months ago

    Is it antidemocratic to disqualify Trump from office and deny him a place on the ballot?

    Third parties are often denied ballot access. Is that antidemocratic?

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
      34·
      10 months ago

      If you can’t cough up the fee (typically $100 or less for most state and local offices) and get several dozen people to sign your nominating papers (varies somewhat by state and office) you’re wasting your time running in the first place.

      The big reason we don’t see third parties doing well in the US is that the bulk of the country uses first-past-the-post general elections. These mean that a vote for a third party candidate hurts the people most apt to implement the policies you care about.

      Three cases:

      Case 1:

      D - 10 votes, R - 9 votes, I - 0 votes

      Democrat wins

      Case 2:

      D - 9 votes, R - 9 votes, I - 1 vote

      Tied election and a coin toss used to decide winner

      Case 3:

      D - 8 votes, R - 9 votes, I - 2 votes

      Republican wins

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        10 months ago

        Case 4:

        D - 9 votes, R - 8 votes, I - 2 votes

        Democrat wins.

        There are systems that solve the spoiler effect, such as:

        • Approval voting - multiple selection, most votes wins
        • STAR voting - ranking, solves the “uncounted votes” issue that RCV has

        In each system, the candidate preferred by the most people (usually a majority) wins.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    41·
    10 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Last month, the states of Colorado and Maine moved to disqualify Donald Trump as a candidate in the 2024 presidential election, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

    In response, Trump has asked the Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf in the Colorado case and he has appealed Maine’s decision.

    Trump, the committee wrote, “unlawfully pressured State officials and legislators to change the results of the election in their States.” He “oversaw an effort to obtain and transmit false electoral certificates to Congress and the National Archives.” He “summoned tens of thousands of supporters to Washington for January 6th,” the day Congress was slated to certify the election results, and “instructed them to march to the Capitol” so that they could “ ‘take back’ their country.’ ” He even sent a message on Twitter attacking his vice president, Mike Pence, knowing full well that “a violent attack on the Capitol was underway.”

    Under a plain reading of Section 3 — and given the evidence uncovered by the Jan. 6 committee — Trump cannot stand for the presidency of the United States or any other federal office, for that matter.

    It would also invite Trump’s allies in the Republican Party to do the same to Democrats, weaponizing Section 3 and disqualifying candidates for any number of reasons.

    And while it will be tempting to attribute this outcome to the ideological composition of the court — as well as the fact that Trump appointed three of its nine members — I think it will, if it happens, have as much to do with the zone of exception that exists around the former president.

    The original article contains 1,515 words, the summary contains 272 words. Saved 82%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • scaredoftrumpwinning@lemmy.world
    2·
    10 months ago

    It doesn’t matter how much he lies about it and the rest of the right wing media lies about it he’s an insurrectionist. It doesn’t matter how much they lie about climate change it still exists and humans are the cause. It doesn’t matter how much they lie they are for family values when they only want to get the religious right on board and control women. This is nothing new in their approach and has been going on for decades. There’s a reason Fox news was created after Nixon and it was to do stuff like this.