LDid the next US presidential campaign start in Colorado? On December 19, the Supreme Court of this state ruled Donald Trump ineligible due to his alleged responsibilities in the assault on the Capitol by his supporters, in Washington, on January 6, 2021. With this decision, it highlighted the perils facing democracy in the United States.
This judgment is based on a paragraph of the fourteenth amendment of the Constitution, which provides that a representative of the State or an elected official involved in an insurrection after having taken an oath to defend this same Constitution has made himself de facto ineligible. . This paragraph historically targeting southern secessionists of the Civil War (1861-1865) has been the subject of intense legal debates for months. While Donald Trump’s trial over his role during this assault is due to take place in 2024, other states have in fact considered that it could not apply to him.
Everything about Donald Trump’s behavior should prohibit him from exercising any public responsibility. His obstinacy in returning to power to settle his scores, as he openly admits, nevertheless subjects the United States to a difficult choice.
The law should apply to him as to any citizen of his country. By excluding it from the presidential election, can judges nevertheless take the risk of appearing to replace voters and fuel distrust against institutions accused of protecting a “system” which is nevertheless nothing other than Right wing state ? And what about the role of arbiter of last resort that Donald Trump intends to have played by the nine judges of the Federal Supreme Court, the highest judicial body in the country, shaped by the three partisan appointments he made during his mandate? The ex-president is counting on them to overturn the Colorado decision and thus put an end to this legal offensive, as well as other procedures.
Throughout the four years he spent in the White House, the ex-president displayed his greatest contempt for the norms that have governed American democracy for more than two centuries. This contempt culminated in his attempt to obstruct one of his pillars, the peaceful transfer of power within the framework of political alternation. Not only did Donald Trump never express the slightest remorse, but he continued to violate the rules, as evidenced by the saga of the archives improperly transferred to his private residence after his departure from power, which earned him another legal proceeding.
While his rhetoric becomes more threatening every day, he has so far taken advantage of the slightest attempt to hold him accountable, to the point of appearing as the undisputed champion of a drifting conservative camp. Instead of disqualifying him, the trials he is facing reinforce his stature within a radicalized base, quick to rename enemies of political adversaries, in this case Democrats, reduced by the ex-president to the rank of “vermin”.
Nothing should be expected from this lost base. On the other hand, we must hope that the incredible sum of these legal proceedings and what they reveal end up convincing independent voters who usually make presidents that Donald Trump is leading the United States towards the loss of its values.