At the risk of sounding like I’m being defeatist, I feel like now is the time to share with you my concern that the 2024 Presidential Election has already basically been decided. It is clear that, at least for now, former President Donald Trump is the most likely to become the Republican Party’s presidential candidate who faces off against President Joe Biden.
If Trump is the GOP nominee, you can expect he will be prevented from holding office under the United States Constitution, thereby handing an automatic victory to the sclerotic Joe Biden.
The two men are deeply unpopular in most national polls (although, Trump is beating Biden in multiple polls conducted in critical swing states, as Trump did to Hillary Clinton in 2016).
And because of how this scenario is unfolding, Trump’s defeat is assured.
The so-called “Deep State” has smothered Donald Trump with one indictment after another.
Despite these legal woes, Trump presses on. The two most serious legal threats to his future are the grand jury investigations headed by Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney Jack Smith.
Appointed by the Biden Administration’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, Smith is heading the special counsel investigations into Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents as well as the investigation into the extent of Trump’s purported involvement in the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill.
Jack Smith Wants His Pound of Trump’s Flesh
It is likely that Smith will get his pound of flesh.
But it is only the January 6 investigation that truly threatens Trump’s ability to run for president.
Two legal scholars have written an article outlining why, if he’s convicted of basically trying to launch an insurrection on January 6, Donald Trump will not only be sent to prison. He would be constitutionally barred from holding office ever again.
That’s how the Democrats and their Administrative State allies are going to get both Trump and the GOP in 2024.
The Washington, D.C.-based judge, Tanya Chutkan, has already raised the ire of the Right-wing with her hardline convictions of January 6 rioters who have appeared in her court. In 19 out of 38 of the January 6 cases she has presided over, according to the Associated Press, Chutkan has “matched or exceeded prosecutors’ recommendations [for sentences of the rioters].”
Basically, the forty-fifth president is all done.
He’s not going to get out of this bind unless he manages to take office and pardon himself before he’s convicted.
But Trump’s interlocutor, Jack Smith, has already moved to set a trial date for January 2—just 13 days before the first GOP Primary vote is set to take place in Iowa.
Ultimately, Judge Chutkan will determine the date of the trial. Although, in our system the accused are guaranteed a speedy trial. If there’s one thing we know it’s that Leftists, like Chutkan, love hiding behind the same Constitution that they and their Progressive ilk are so keen on destroying.
Don’t Expect Much Help from the Conservative Supreme Court
Once Trump is found guilty, as the two prominent legal scholars who’ve written an article outlining how Trump would be disqualified from holding public office, the Democrats will then move to the next phase of their plan to end Trump’s campaign. They will argue that, under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, Trump is legally barred from holding public office.
At that point, Donald Trump and the GOP could challenge the finding in the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). Maybe the SCOTUS saves the republic.
After all, three of the nine members of the court were Trump appointees. They’re also true believers in the cause of conservatism.
These are the conservative jurists on the SCOTUS who are proud members of the conservative Federalist Society. Then again, though, the two lawyers who wrote the article outlining Trump’s ineligibility for holding office if he’s convicted are also conservative members of the Federalist Society.
Plus, the Trump members on the SCOTUS are a mixed bag when it comes to rulings—notably Brett Kavanaugh and Neal Gorsuch. Kavanaugh derives from the Bush wing of the Republican Party and Gorsuch has a hardcore Libertarian streak. These two men, at different times during their service on the bench, have shown that they will not carry water for the forty-fifth president.
So, who knows how a possible challenge in the Supreme Court to any ruling that Trump was ineligible to hold office again would really go.
I apologize to any of the optimists out there, but I am deeply skeptical that the court will rule in a way that allows for Trump to compete fairly for the presidency in 2024. Because, while obscure, the law is clear that someone who attempted to incite insurrection cannot hold political office. If Trump is found guilty in Jack Smith’s January 6 investigation, he’d be disqualified under the Constitution from being able to hold office.
Democrats Gaming the System
The Democrats are afraid that Joe Biden is so weak he might not be able to beat Donald Trump. By letting Trump run and win the GOP nomination and then kneecapping him just as he clears the bar of the vicious Republican Primary, the Democrats are ensuring that they will be able to push Biden over the finish line in 2024.
The Republicans, if Trump were to be constitutionally disqualified from running for office after he is made the Republican nominee, would be thrown into disarray. They’d have to go back to the proverbial drawing board and figure out who could replace Trump—all the meanwhile Trump and his supporters understandably went ape over the court ruling.
Nevertheless, the presidential race would grind on.
There would be no way that the GOP could pull themselves from this mess, leaving the field to Biden.
Who could they possibly pick to replace Trump if he were to be taken out by legal matters after securing the GOP nomination?
What’s more, what ordinary voter would accept whichever GOP politico replaced Trump?
The Jack Ryan Example
Remember when someone leaked the sealed divorce records of up-and-coming Illinois Republican politician Jack Ryan just before he was set to go up against Barack Obama to be the senator from Illinois in 2004?
The GOP in Illinois fell apart after Ryan had to abandon the race without giving the Illinois GOP time to adapt. Something similar but on a national scale will happen here.
Or that’s what the Democrats are hoping for.
Republicans: Pick Someone Else!
The best solution would be for the Republicans to nominate someone other than Donald Trump in 2024 to be their nominee.
Since that’s unlikely to happen, you should anticipate some variation of the excrement show I just outlined above to occur—ending in the sad reelection of Joe Biden. Republicans can change this. They can nominate someone that the Left doesn’t have all this dirt on.
Alas, they won’t.
Trump’s conviction and disqualification from ever holding political office again look now like a sure thing.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
From the Vault
‘You Really Oughta Go Home’: F-22 Raptor Stealth Fighter Flew Under F-4 From Iran
