Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wrote Sunday on Facebook that former President Donald Trump should be disqualified from running again, not just because of his indictment, but under the Fourteenth Amendment.
“Not only should Trump be prosecuted,” Reich wrote, “but Section 3 of the 14th Amendment clearly bars anyone from holding office who has ‘engaged in insurrection’ against the United States of America. He should be disqualified from running for president. It’s that simple.”
Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment reads:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
The term “insurrection or rebellion” refers to the former Confederate States of America. Democrats claim that Trump is guilty of “insurrection” for the Capitol riot on January 6, though the president held a peaceful rally a mile away whose aim was to oppose the certification of some Electoral College votes, a constitutional step that Democrats themselves had tried before. He also told rioters at the Capitol to go home, albeit several hours later.
Last week, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow suggested that Trump might be persuaded to agree to drop out of the 2024 presidential race in exchange for the Department of Justice dropping its pending charges against him.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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