Let’s revisit and focus on a specific piece of Trump’s rhetoric that James Joyner noted yesterday, specifically this: describing those who have been tried and convicted of their actions on January 6th, 2021 as “hostages.”
This is not the first or only time he has used the term. Note the following from Truth Social (via The Hill):
“My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!”
All of which makes me think of the following:
Section 3.
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.
Trump is currently giving comfort (and promising aid) to insurrectionists.
It is as if allowing such a person access to the highest office in the land is a really bad idea and that the framers of the 14th Amendment tried to codify that fact into the US Constitution.
Side note: I still maintain that the last sentence of the section is the opposite of requiring Congress to act to implement the rule contained in the section, i.e., instead of telling Congress it had to pass a law, the passage states that Congress can overturn the strictures of section 3 via a super-majority.
No time for much more than an observation on this, as it struck me this morning driving in.
Some additional reading via MSNBC: Are these the Jan. 6 ‘hostages’ Trump promises to free?
Also allow me to add the following form Bill Kristol in referencing the first clip above:
But I come back to the salute.
I’ve never served in the military. So I’ve never really saluted or been saluted. But I served in the White House, and traveled with Vice President Quayle, and was near the men and women of the military a fair amount then. And I’ve been around the military a bit in subsequent years.
I’ve seen many salutes. And I’ve always found them oddly moving. They’re gestures of respect and acknowledgments of order. They embody a kind of rule of law, a setting aside of personal feelings. You salute the rank, not the man.
Presidents as civilians probably shouldn’t return salutes (they didn’t, I believe, until pretty recently). But if they do so now, they do so as a gesture of respect. Respect for the military who are serving our nation. And respect for the nation, for the republic, and for the Constitution that upholds it.
And to see Trump saluting the insurrectionists, the Americans he persuaded to violently break the law in the service of undermining the Constitution, was unnerving.
But perhaps also clarifying.
Trump salutes the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol.
Trump supports criminals.
The rest of us support the republic.
It is truly stomach-turning.
