He is guilty of insurrection and there's a phone call of him committing direct electoral fraud.

It's very reasonable and within legal precedent for voters not to want someone committed to being a dictator and guilty of insurrection on a ballot.

It's not a matter of "the right play" or lending his nonsense credibility. Donald Trump is constitutionally ineligible to hold office. Some states have laws prohibiting people who are ineligible from appearing on the ballot.

Arnold Schwarzenegger cannot run for president, either. He is legally prohibited from appearing on the ballot. If he petitioned to be included on the ballot, and was refused, it wouldn't be a play or violating the rights of Arnold's supporters.

"Desperate"- some would say it's their legal obligation as a citizen to protest an insurrectionist cunt being on the ballot.

If he had been arrested, tried and ****** in 2021 this wouldn't be an issue. Doesn't really matter anyway; with the electoral college, red states dominate though they have less population and fewer teeth. My measly little anti-trump vote goes right in the shitter.

"That Jeffrey Dahmer guy is one naughty fella, but idk if calling the cops on him is the right play. It seems desperate. His arrest is giving him even more credibility that he's a famous serial killer."

Sure, let's not apply the law to ex presidents. What could go wrong.

He launched an insurrection to overthrow the US government, then gave aid and comfort to those combatants. He has then gone on record saying he plans to pardon those combatants upon taking office. He also has plans to round up his political rivals on day one of "being a dictator", as well as using the military to lay waste to any and all protesters. He has called immigrants verman "poisoning the blood of our country", which I'm sure wouldn't go hand and hand with vigilante justice in rounding up and executing anyone the maga folks find to be an "immigrant" in the same vein as the Salem witch trials (or people of color).

How anyone can look at just those things, with a longer list growing by the day, and see him as a viable candidate is mind boggling.

It might be political hay for him to be disqualified. That's a huge problem.

It also might be a bad argument; there's definitely SOME kind of due process requirement implied that it is hard to tell if Trump has satisfied. I think he's an antidemocratic insurrectionist wannabee tinpot fascist, but whether that legal hurdle has been cleared is a question unanswered.

On the flip side, there's little worse for our democracy than the law deciding not to go after Trump because he's so politically powerful. The law says insurrectionists are disqualified. So these challenges have merit and should be allowed to play out, just as the justice department ought to investigate and prosecute and all these other things. We're abandoning rule of law if we say that we aren't going to prosecute for political reasons.

And the due process concern? That's what's going through the courts now. This may be the process due. And if it isn't, the courts will have to tell us what the requirements are.

Too bad the outcome will probably be the SCOTUS doing their usual chickenshit nonsense and saying it's up to the legislature to define the process so that they can protect their Very Special Boy.

you dont like the guy but you sure seem to want to defend him. it seems desperate. its giving him even more credibility.

Your bait seems desperate.

If you don't think taking him off the ballot is the correct decision it's because you're an enemy of the United States of America.

Well we could debate taking the driver's license for people involved in a DUI about the same as this topic in the vein of "is this the right play?" The notion is that folks who are apt to take the mechanisms of Government and use them as such to violate an oath they took to defend the Constitution, are likely folks we don't want to hand back control of those mechanisms so they can get another crack at it. Sort of how we don't give folks in a DUI back their license until there's been a clear "rehabilitation" or if we want to be pure cynical "a debt to society paid". The point of not giving them their license right away is because they could potentially do a lot of harm with it being just handed back to them.

And you've indicated that it seems desperate. And yeah, the whole mechanism of disqualification and the whole fact that treason is one of the very few things in criminality that's laid out by the Constitution, is such because nobody wanted people to just randomly start firing off disqualifications. It's made to be a really, really, really, really last resort kind of thing. It's supposed to be something that we try all these other hundreds of things first before using. So if it feels desperate in the sense that the word is defined as Having lost all hope; despairing it's because there isn't a lot of hope that the GOP has pulled itself together enough to prevent someone who incited people to storm the capitol and attempt to upend an election from taking the nomination again.

None of this developed in a vacuum. Trump has done and said things that few other Presidents have said and done and all the mechanisms before have in one way or another nixed the person from returning. Those functions have stopped working and that's getting more into a complex topic about why and it's a long history. But I can tell you there was a transformation of the GOP and how they conducted themselves pre/post Haley Barbour and it especially came to a head with Reince Priebus and you can get even deeper on how our forcing of a two party system has led to this.

But in summary, the GOP as a political apparatus has a great deal of control ceded to them via codification in various State laws. They are absolutely not just some group of folks coming together, lots of States have laws, rules, or regulations that basically establish them that say 3rd parties don't get to enjoy. But the GOP has lost a lot of internal control and regulation of their own apparatus, I mean look how shit show the 2016 GOP primary was. Look at the 2024 GOP primary and how the person leading the nomination isn't even in the apparatus ran debates. There's zero control mechanisms working within that political group. That's problematic because the GOP gets a free pass to get on the ballot in pretty much every State, by default they show up there.

So you've got a group that gets to be in the election without the normal State level checks and balances but that group has lost complete control over their political machine. That's so many red flags that it is a red flag factory. So with all of those controls failing within that party, yeah, we've got to pull the emergency brake here. It is a big deal.

It’s giving him even more credibility

Well I'll say this. Trump makes the point that the political elites run the show and what not. And yeah, as far as the two party system goes being forced down us, yeah, no disagreement there. But he advocates "none" for political apparatus control and that's too far the other direction. And that's actually a worse direction. Ideally I'd like something in the middle, but if we're making it binary, I'll keep the two party system as it is (just a personal taste).

And I think that really sums up what we saw in 2020 and what we are looking at for a 2024 run. You've got two really bad options here. One is obscenely bad and the other is just bad in the business as usual kind of way. So with all that said, as far as granting him "credibility" yeah, it highlights something wrong with what we got. But holy shit, there's no part of what Trump is offering that we want to replace what we got with.

You know here in Tennessee I've heard a saying that came about with Governor Ray Blanton. "If you think the professional politicians are bad, just you wait till the amateurs show up." I get what Trump is spitting here, but best I can do is buy about 10% of it because the other 90% is pure madness. So he, in my book, doesn't get points for saying something that surface level is correct but deep dive into is a sea of authoritarianism horror.

All the other crimes he has committed require a conviction to have consequences. Considering that it took 3 years to charge him with things everyone saw with their own eyes, convictions would come too late to stop him from becoming president again and just pardoning himself. Disqualification doesn't need a conviction.

You think following procedure when someone commits insurrection is desperate? It seems desperate to move the goal posts when you don't like the outcome

Thanks, "Vlad"

Counterpoint: "Maybe the Best Way to Oppose Fascism is to Fucking Oppose It"

Courts should do their job and remove him now and give Congress time to overturn it if they so choose or if constituents pressure them into doing it. Or amend the Constitution to change election law so he's eligible without congressional approval.