How Trump Made it to the 2024 Election That Never Happened
History from the Future
About 17 million support the Insurrectionist Movement - the use of violence to restore Trump to the presidency as of April 2023
31 million adults agree that the “US Constitution should be ignored” (about evenly across parties), while
41 million adults favor the “United States having a national divorce.”
77% of the public supports bipartisan solutions to American political violence,
- University of Chicago - Chicago Project on Security and Threats, April 30, 2023
If you ask most people, they remember where they were and what they were doing in late October 2024 when the Supreme Court issued its ruling on Trump’s eligibility to assume the presidency despite his felony conviction for inciting the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
In late 2023 Attorneys General from various states sued to strike Trump from the 2024 presidential primary ballots. They were looking for guidance. Trump’s criminal federal trials scheduled for 2024, were lined up like aircraft preparing to land. The January 6 Federal election case was scheduled for March 4. The Stormy Daniel Hush Money case would be March 5. The exact date of the Georgia Federal Election tampering case had only a broad date of March. With 19 defendants including Trump it was possible that there would be multiple trials in Atlanta. May 20th had been chosen for the start of the Mar-a-Lago federal documents case.
There were also civil trials including the New York case on the business practices of the Trump Organization. The criminal indictments were the most serious and could involve prison sentences. No previous president had been criminally indicted let alone convicted. However, federal convictions could be pardoned by the president. This could be a possibility if Trump was re-elected or possibly a Democrat in the White House might do it to prevent national upheaval caused by an estimated 30 to 40 million Trump voters and supporters. The more serious risk would be a state conviction in Georgia which has stricter pardon and commutation laws beyond the reach of a presidential pardon.
The cases from key swing states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin were three of the most prominent since they could shift the vote in the Electoral College. Trump at 77 was still the run a way favorite of Republicans at 60% and expanded his lead in the polls. He was tied in the polls with the 80-year-old President Biden. Independents, Democrats, and some Republicans were not happy with the choice they were given. Almost half of Republican-leaning independents – 46% - supported Trump. President Biden had the support of about 70% of Democrats going into the primaries. Suburban women a key election deciding constituency opposed the Republican ban on abortion and were starting to lean Democratic. A lot of Biden’s support was not so much for him but against Trump.
Article 3 of the 14th Amendment was probably one of the more overlooked parts of the amendment and the Constitution itself. Article 3 banned those who led or fought on the Confederate side from being an Officer of the United States. The offices of President and Vice president were named specifically. After Trump’s indictment for inciting the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. capitol building legal scholars began looking at Article 3. Those on the right discounted this effort since its proponents were primarily Democrats. However, eyebrows got raised when conservative Republican legal scholars began to make the case for it.
The thought was that the provision was “self-executing” in the sense that once you became an insurrectionist you lost your ability to hold office. In the case of the Civil War, it was obvious who was a rebel. On July 9, 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. However, the penalty of Article 3 lasted only 169 days. On December 25, 1868, Lincoln’s successor Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, prioritized the political rehabilitation of the southern states and issued a blanket pardon for all who had fought or sided with the Confederacy.
The year 2024 marked the beginning of the end. Although many would later claim that the end began with Trump’s appointment of three conservative judges: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Roe v. Wade had made abortion a constitutional right in 1973. It was overturned by Trump’s conservative court in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022. Although it was a campaign pledge that Trump had fulfilled, he started to distance himself from it as opposition grew across the political spectrum and it hampered Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections. The bulk of Trump supporters backed state laws that banned abortion absolutely after six weeks and made no exception for cases of rape, incest, or the health of the mother.
As 2023 came to a close, the disqualification cases made their way through the appellate courts and arrived at the Supreme Court relatively quickly. Opponents of disqualification argued that it was a Civil War provision with no real relevance to the present. Further, former President Trump had not been convicted of leading or abetting an insurgency. An indictment was insufficient. In early December the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that Trump could not be declared ineligible to stand for election because he had not been convicted of leading or abetting an insurgency. The matter could be revisited if Trump were convicted of such charges. The primary ballots would carry his name. Scholars and commentators have said that this was a wise decision since the public would have only accepted a decision made by the election itself. Others said that the court was re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The irony is that Trump’s legal jeopardy had been created by his refusal to accept his defeat in the 2020 election. Given the widespread belief among his supporters that he had been cheated, how would they accept any election that he did not win?
Trump had used all the litigation to raise money and continued to rake it in. His strength grew as he convinced his supporter that he was persecuted by Joe Biden personally. Each trial further entrenched his followers and Trump’s control over them. If there were convictions prior to the election, the appeals could take another year. Nothing said that a candidate convicted of federal crimes could not take office. Trump met all the constitutional qualifications. As Election Day approached, the court ruled 6 to 3 that according to a strict reading of the Constitution, Trump could not be barred from re-assuming the presidency. Although it had been building, the unrest boiled over. Peaceful demonstrations now became riots. Business districts burned. Looting was widespread and the country ground to a halt. The police and the National Guard battled with partisans armed with automatic weapons. Liberals who fought for gun control armed themselves as roving vigilantes fortified their own Blue and Red enclaves. Calls for peace and calm led to threats and even the murder of those calling for an end to violence. There were calls for martial law. There were calls to postpone the election. People with money headed to Canada and Europe. Others left Purple zones for the relative security of Blue or Red zones and created an internal refugee crisis. The country’s enemies began to circle overhead, and her allies looked to themselves. Right wing elements in the military and the police mutinied.
Yes. Everyone remembers where they were, when the court ruled in favor of Donald Trump’s ability to assume the presidency if he were elected. Unfortunately, it never got to an election.