Save democracy by removing political opponents, professor urges
President Donald Trump should not be allowed to run for president in 2024 because he “committed treason,” according to a University of California Berkeley professor who also served in President Bill Clinton’s cabinet.
Robert Reich, the former labor secretary under Clinton, said that Trump’s efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election amount to treason. He teaches public policy at UC Berkeley.
“Trump is running for re-election, despite the explicit language of section three of the 14th amendment to the constitution, which prohibits anyone who has held public office and who has engaged in insurrection against the United States from ever again serving in public office,” Reich wrote on Monday in The Guardian.
He wrote further:
The reason for the disqualification clause is that someone who has engaged in an insurrection against the United States cannot be trusted to use constitutional methods to regain office. (Notably, all three branches of the federal government have described the January 6 attack on the US Capitol as an “insurrection”.)
Can any of us who saw (or have learned through the painstaking work of the January 6 committee) what Trump tried to do to overturn the results of the 2020 election have any doubt he will once again try to do whatever necessary to regain power, even if illegal and unconstitutional?
Reich, while criticizing Trump’s assertions that the 2020 election was stolen, promoted the idea that the former president may scheme to steal the election.
“But what if Trump gets secretaries of state and governors who are loyal to him to alter the election machinery to ensure he wins?” Reich wrote. “What if he gets them to prevent people likely to vote for Joe Biden from voting at all?”
To save democracy, Reich urged election officials to ban the president from filing the paperwork to appear on the ballot and give voters a chance to support him again.
“Filing deadlines for 2024 presidential candidates will come in the next six months, in most states. Secretaries of state – who in most cases are in charge of deciding who gets on the ballot – must refuse to place Donald Trump’s name on the 2024 ballot, based on the clear meaning of section three of the 14th amendment to the US constitution,” Reich wrote.
The former Clinton appointee is no stranger to urging action against his political opponents. He previously said that Democratic senators should have given Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, “the backs of their hands” for opposing the elimination of the filibuster. Senator Sinema has since left the Democratic Party.
He said he deleted the tweet because it was “widely misinterpreted and distorted by conservative media.”
It’s not just former presidents that worry Reich, though. He also saw a dictatorial future that would occur if Elon Musk bought Twitter.
An open internet with free debate is “dangerous rubbish,” Reich wrote. An open internet “is the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron on Earth,” he opined.
MORE: Ted Cruz and Michael Knowles are ‘real threats’ to democracy, Yale student says
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