Not only should Trump not be on the ballot—He should already be in PRISON!

In any other first world country Trump is in jail

The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear the appeal of the recent trial court ruling that while Donald Trump “engaged in an insurrection” as defined by the 14^th Amendment,  the “insurrectionist” ban somehow does not apply to the office of the President. The oral argument for this appeal is scheduled for December 6.

But here’s the thing: In no other democratic nation would Trump be on the ballot again after attempting a coup and inciting the Jan 6 attack. In fact, in any other nation concerned with preserving their democracy, Trump would already be in prison.

There is no debate that Trump attempted to remain as President despite losing the 2020 election.  A federal grand jury agreed with that very point as noted in the indictment of Trump in the Jan 6 case in Washington, D.C. That indictment states bluntly, “Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power.”  From there, as detailed in the indictment, Trump “pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.”

And in the recent Colorado case considering the 14^th Amendment’s insurrection ban, the trial judge wrote after a full trial that Trump knowingly incited the Jan 6 attack. The judge explained that Trump in the minutes before the Jan 6 attack told his supporters to “fight” 20 times and implored the angry crowd to action with lines like, “You will have an illegitimate president…we can’t let that happen.”

Thus, the judge directly blamed Trump for the Jan 6 insurrection, noting that Trump knew that his “incendiary rhetoric” in the moments before the attack “issued by a speaker who routinely embraced political violence and had inflamed the anger of his supporters leading up to the certification, was likely to incite imminent lawlessness and disorder.” She added alarmingly, “Further, the Court has found that Trump was aware that his supporters were willing to engage in political violence and that they would respond to his calls for them to do so.”

In what first world nation would a person who engaged in such conduct be allowed to seek office again?! We don’t have to go far in either time or distance to see current examples of how other nations moved swiftly to preserve their democracy.

The most recent example came in Brazil where Trump loving Jair Bolsonaro publicly attempted to undermine the 2022 presidential election--where he was seeking re-election--by baselessly claiming months before voting began that the country’s electronic voting system was rigged.

After Bolsonaro lost the election to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, he refused to concede. Instead, he claimed—without evidence—that the election was illegitimate because voting machines had allegedly malfunctioned and any votes cast through them should be annulled.

Bolsonaro’s repeated lies that the election was stolen caused his supporters to set up encampments outside of military installations which experts noted “were a call for the Brazilian armed forces to take power and restore Bolsonaro.”  A week after Lula was sworn—and taking a page from MAGA’s Jan 6 attack--Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed Congress, the presidential palace and Supreme Court in the capital of Brasília.

How did the Brazilian government respond? Within six months of Bolsanaro leaving office, he was barred from running for office again until 2030 after a panel of judges concluded that he abused his power and cast unfounded doubts on the country’s electronic voting system. The message was clear: If you attempt to undermine Brazil’s democracy, you will be swiftly banned from being a part of it in the future.

In addition, in October, a congressional probe in Brazil concluded after hearing from a litany of witnesses that Bolsonaro should face criminal charges for disrupting the democratic order and an attempted coup d'état. That was only eight months after Bolsonaro left office. (In contrast, the Jan 6 committee’s final report was released nearly two years after the Jan 6 attack on December 22, 2022.)  As one well-known Brazilian Senator stated after the release of the report recommending Bolsonaro be prosecuted: "Congress gave a response of intolerance to anti-democratic acts," adding, "It's a demonstration that Brazil overcame fascism, overcame barbarism."

Another recent example of a nation sending a clear message that those attempting a coup will face swift justice is Bolivia. In 2019, conservative Jeanine Áñez took office not by way of an election but by declaring herself the nation’s interim president after the president at the time fled the nation. While in office, the Trump backed Anez  jailed and prosecuted many left-wing critics and was accused of enacting the “politics of revenge.” The Organization of American States’ human rights watchdog reported evidence of “massacres,” “systematic torture” and “summary executions” by security forces under Áñez’s interim government. In addition, according to a group of independent experts commissioned by the Inter-American Commission on Human Right, Áñez empowered the police to use excessive force against supporters of her political opponents after she signed a decree guaranteeing amnesty for security personnel involved in such conduct.

Áñez dropped out of the race for president in 2020 given she was trailing badly in the polls. Just three months after she left office, Áñez was arrested and held in prison until her trial in June 2022. At the trial, she was convicted of engaging in a coup to take power, violating the constitution and of dereliction of duty, which resulted in her being sentenced to ten years in prison.

While the legal systems of Brazil and Bolivia differ from our own, the message from those in power in these two nations is clear: Those involved in coups will be charged swiftly and punished. That is how future coups are deterred.

Instead in the United States, Trump not only walks free nearly 3 years after his attempted coup, but he is also the likely 2024 GOP presidential nominee. He is also dangerously inciting violence against the judges and prosecutors in his criminal cases. If you read about these facts happening in another country, you would likely be concerned that the nation was about to become an autocracy.  And you would be right to fear that.

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