Legislation to Bar Trump from Office under 14th Amendment

From this:

A group of 40 House Democrats, led by Rep. David Cicilline (R.I.), introduced legislation on Thursday to bar former President Trump from holding future federal office under the 14th Amendment.

Section 3 of the amendment states that no one who previously took an oath to support the Constitution and engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” shall “hold any office, civil or military, under the United States.”

Cicilline said in a release announcing the legislation that Trump “very clearly” engaged in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, with the intention of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election. 

“You don’t get to lead a government you tried to destroy,” he said. 

This is a truly terrible idea, for a broad number of reasons:

It won’t work, because it’s unconstitutional.  Trump has not been convicted of participating in an insurrection.  What’s “very clear” to someone may not be at all clear to a jury.  The Constitution, in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, commands that no one shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”

This will (rightfully) be perceived as a political attack, and a supremely stupid one at that. It sounds more like something that would come from a Ron DeSantis or a Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Trump is already completely unelectable.  His base is evaporating on its own. When an enemy is committing suicide, wisdom suggests shutting up and getting out of the way.

If we want to help move the process along, just arrest the bastard, and charge him with a full array of felonies.  There is no way to be certain of this, but it appears that Special Counsel Jack Smith is fairly close to bringing this whole thing to a crashing finale.