No, Donald Trump can’t just be magically “disqualified” from the 2024 ballot
I always urge Palmer Report readers not to fall for what I call “magic wand ideas.” These clever-sounding but simplistically unrealistic ideas periodically pop up on social media and purport to instantly and easily solve all of our political problems. These kinds of ideas tend to go viral, and tend to be hyped the most loudly by the laziest of pundits, precisely because they’re such simplistic nonsense that they end up eliciting an emotional response instead of a logical one.
One of the most pervasive magic wand ideas over the past year or two has been the notion that Donald Trump can be “disqualified” from the 2024 ballot simply by invoking the 14th Amendment. This one pops up all the time on social media. The 14th Amendment is always portrayed as having legs of its own, and being able to simply implement itself. But in reality no constitutional amendment or clause has ever come within a million miles of working that way.
Any attempt at removing Trump from the 2024 ballot, on any state or local level, would trigger a lengthy court battle which frankly we would probably lose. Even if we initially won, it would eventually end up in front of the Supreme Court. Does anyone believe that this Supreme Court would rule that Donald Trump has to be removed from the ballot?
Yet because the theoretical idea of being able to flip a “14th Amendment” switch and send Trump through an instant trap door is so enticing, this idea just won’t die. Now we have major legal pundits declaring in an absurd Atlantic article that the 14th Amendment has already been triggered, automatically, and that local election officials can now just start removing Trump’s name from the ballot. Sure, the article acknowledges that there would be legal battles over it, but glosses over the fact that these legal battles would almost surely result in the whole thing going nowhere.
This is the particularly exasperating thing about these magic wand ideas. The people hyping this “14th Amendment” thing kept telling us that Trump just had to be hit with certain criminal charges, and he’d instantly fall through the 14th Amendment trap door. But now Trump has been hit with the bulk of the criminal charges that he’s going to face, and those “disqualifying” charges aren’t among them, because Jack Smith lives in the real world. So the pundits who have been making bank by hyping this magic wand idea have now upgraded it with even more magical hyperbole, such that criminal charges aren’t even needed in order to send Trump through the 14th Amendment trap door. All we have to do is… believe?
The fervor behind these magic wand ideas tends to get dangerously close to being cult-like. And if these legal pundits truly believe that Trump doesn’t even need to face specific criminal charges in order to be magically disqualified under the 14th Amendment, why were they giving us such a different version of the story back when we were waiting to see what Trump would be charged with?
That’s because this stuff is all a game. “Look at how smart I am. Look at what I came up with! I have this clever idea that’s so uniquely brilliant, no one in the real world has even thought of it! Retweet me! Put me on TV to talk about it! Make my article about it go viral!” What’s maddening is that so many political pundits end up hyping these kinds of magic wand ideas, you can’t even set things straight by calling out any one of them. Once a pundit or two goes viral with a certain magic wand idea, suddenly every other pundit gets on board with the same magic wand idea, in the hope of also going viral.
This reminds me of when Trump first took office, and certain legal pundits decided that the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution was going to magically disqualify Trump from office. The Emoluments Clause does exist, and its language does appear to forbid using the office to enrich yourself. But it was routinely portrayed on Twitter (and to an extent on TV) as some kind of magic wand that could be waved over Trump’s head, causing him to fall through an Oval Office trap door and no longer be President.
Once people in the real world went into court and tried to make an Emoluments Clause case against Trump, it turned out to be really tricky. It was a very long battle that ultimately went nowhere. Even if it had succeeded, it would have taken a very long time, and it never would have resulted in Trump being magically removed from office. At the very worst, the courts might have forced him to realign his assets while in office.
The “Emoluments Clause” hype was really only ever about allowing political pundits to sound smart and clever. It was about going viral and getting TV bookings by making audiences think that this obscure clause of the Constitution could somehow send Trump through a trap door. And it was all just fantasyland stuff.
So far this “14th Amendment” hype is shaping up to be the exact same thing. It’s being falsely presented as a magic wand that can be instantly waved that sends Trump through a trap door, when in reality it would be a lengthy and murky court battle that we would probably end up losing.
One of the reasons political pundits are able to exploit this “magically disqualified” thing is that the 14th Amendment – crucial as it is – doesn’t get talked about in everyday life. It’s seen as this more mystical thing, as if there’s some universal agreement as to its meaning and its application. But we all know that Amendments don’t work that way.
The First and Second Amendments are straightforward in their wording, but we still have endless legal battles over what they really mean and how they should be implemented. For instance, to me, the Second Amendment very clearly states that no one is allowed to own a gun unless they’re a member of a well regulated militia. But that doesn’t mean I can just wave the Second Amendment around in the air, and poof, suddenly individual gun ownership is outlawed. To actually implement my interpretation, I would have to go into court and convince judge after judge of my interpretation. And since the courts aren’t going to see it the way I do, I would ultimately get nowhere.
It’s the same thing with the 14th Amendment. No matter how clear you think its meaning is, your interpretation doesn’t magically trigger anything. Unless you think you can convince the courts to forcefully implement your interpretation of the 14th Amendment, you’ve got nothing.
When it comes to the current hype around “Trump is disqualified,” the proof is in the pudding – or the lack thereof. Every pundit who’s chasing clout by hyping this idea is conveniently glossing over the part where it would somehow have to survive the inevitable court challenges. That’s because the pundits who hype this kind of stuff know that in order to make these kinds of magic wand ideas go viral, they have to keep it unrealistically simple. They have to make it sound so amazing and so easy, it elicits an emotional response instead of a logical response.
The kicker is this. If Trump is convicted on the kinds of charges that could potentially disqualify him from office under the 14th Amendment, he’ll be in prison for the rest of his life anyway – at which point the notion of “disqualifying” him from office would be superfluous. It’s part of why the pundits hyping this “Trump is disqualified” idea have now upgraded it to where it supposedly no longer even needs criminal charges to succeed. These kinds of magic wand ideas are always at odds with the reality of what’s actually playing out in the real world. The more obvious it becomes that the “Trump is disqualified” hype is not what’s going to take him down, the more magically powerful they have to make their “Trump is disqualified” hype in order to keep it relevant.
In any case, I’m tired of hearing about this “Trump is magically disqualified” hype. There’s not a single word in that Atlantic article that gives any credence to the notion that it’s a winnable idea in court. As of now it’s just a simplistic idea that allows pundits to sound smart, and allows audiences to feel smart. Wake me if anyone ever presents an actual path for how we win the “Trump is disqualified” thing in court. I won’t hold my breath. In the meantime all this 14th Amendment magic wand hype is distracting a whole lot of people from a whole lot of very real political battles that are playing out as we speak. I’d much prefer to focus on that.
