Former President Donald Trump's legal defense by his attorneys in response to a suit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which seeks to have him disqualified from the ballot in California under the 14th Amendment, is a doozy. We know that Trump has never read the Constitution, but he could at least fake it. After all, he faked being a president for four years. Although, he's a terrible actor. Trump's attorneys argue that the twice impeached one-term President was not required to “support” the Constitution.
The Independent reports:
A clause of the Amendment, which passed into the Constitution in 1868, bans those who “engaged in insurrection” against the United States from holding any civil, military, or elected office without the approval of two-thirds of the House and Senate.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers are arguing that the phrasing of the clause – section three – does not apply to all officers of the United States, “but only those who take an oath ‘to support the US Constitution’”.
“The Presidential oath, which the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment surely knew, requires the President to swear to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution — not to ‘support’ the Constitution," said the filing, obtained by news outlet Law and Crime.
"Because the framers chose to define the group of people subject to Section Three by an oath to ‘support’ the Constitution of the United States, and not by an oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment never intended for it to apply to the President.
“If they wanted to include in the reach of Section Three, they could have done so by expanding the language of which type of oath would bring an ‘officer’ under the strictures of Section Three.
“They did not do so, and no number of semantical arguments will change this simple fact. As such, Section Three does not apply to President Trump.”
Our democracy is barely hanging on, and that assclown's supporters won't care that he has little regard for the Constitution. They didn't blink when he suggested terminating parts of it. This is just more of the same from that anti-American buffoon. But thanks for saying the quiet part out loud, I guess. Perhaps Rep. George Santos, who drafted the Constitution, can explain it to Donald Trump.
