SCOTUS may bar Trump from the ballot as an act of self-preservation

The Justices are human beings.

One thing lost in the debate over whether the US Supreme Court will disqualify Donald Trump from ever serving as President for violating Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is that the Supreme Court justices are human beings. What I mean by that is that all nine current Supreme Court justices have worked for decades to make it to the nation’s highest court. And the last thing anyone of them would want to see is the Supreme Court being stripped of power rendering them as nothing more than nine people in black robes pretending to be judges.

Every member of the Supreme Court has seen the actions of Trump from his attempted coup to his Jan 6 attack. And as of late, they’ve also seen a desperate Trump who has begun to openly quote Hitler while vowing to rule as a dictator focused on weaponizing the government to punish critics. They, too, have seen Trump pledge to fill his administration with people who will be loyal to him and his autocratic desires.

As every one of the nine Supreme Court justices get, in the dictatorship Trump is vowing to implement, there is little to no place for a judiciary to be used as a check on his power. Do you think that Trump will tolerate an “independent judiciary” to stand in his way? Bluntly, do you doubt for a moment that Trump’s MAGA base would cheer if Trump disregarded court orders—especially given he has long slammed the judiciary as “political”?

And the MAGA base would undoubtedly cheer if Trump expanded the Supreme Court to allow him to appoint absolute loyalists on the nation’s top court, thus, diluting if not erasing the power of justices who refuse to support his agenda.

In fact, Trump in his first term had already made the judiciary and even the US Supreme Court dominated by GOP appointees one of his most visible targets.

Here are just a few reminders:

1.     Early in his first year in office, Trump slammed the GOP appointed district judge who blocked the first version of his “Muslim travel ban” as a “so-called judge” whose “ridiculous” ruling would be overturned. At the time, Trump also dangerously urged his followers to blame the judge and the judiciary as a whole if any terrorist attack carried out by an immigrant.  

2.     During the oral argument in the US court of appeals on that travel ban, he criticized the judges who were skeptical that Trump had the power to impose the ban saying: “I listened to a bunch of stuff last night on television that was disgraceful…I think it’s sad. I think it’s a sad day. I think our security is at risk today.”

Those comments caused Trump Supreme Court justice nominee Neal Gorsuch at the time to call Trump’s attacks on the federal judges as “demoralizing” and “disheartening.”

3.     In 2017, Trump said “the courts are slow and political.”

4.     In 2018: After Judge Jon Tigar of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ordered the Trump administration to accept asylum claims regardless of where migrants entered the country, Trump called the decision “a disgrace,” attacked Tigar as “an Obama judge,” and critiqued the Ninth Circuit as “really something we have to take a look at because it’s not fair.”

When Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare public statement in response saying there are no “Obama judges,” only people who serve impartially as judges, Trump criticized Roberts by name writing: “Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have “Obama judges,” and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.” Trump then slammed the idea that these judges are an “independent judiciary” and warned that “these rulings are making our country unsafe! Very dangerous and unwise!”

Clearly, Trump was laying the groundwork with his supporters to view the judiciary and their decisions that he didn’t agree with as illegitimate. The same way Trump later would claim the 2020 election results were illegitimate.

5.     In fact, in December 2020,  when the US Supreme Court refused to overturn the 2020 election results with even the three justices Trump appointed ruling against him, Trump posted on social media: “The Supreme Court really let us down. No Wisdom, No Courage!”  (That post sounds similar to Trump’s tweet during the Jan 6 attack when he wrote about Mike Pence letting him down: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution."  That tweet incited the crowd to become even angrier. Do you doubt that Trump would incite his followers to attack the Supreme Court the same way he did on Jan 6 if it was part of his scheme to remain in power?!)

6.     In June 2020, when the GOP controlled Supreme Court in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts that upheld a program known as DACA allowing young, undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States, Trump posted on line: "Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?"  And in another tweet that followed he wrote about the decision: "these horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives."

Trump has made it clear that he has no respect for an independent judiciary. He wants a rubber stamp. And if he doesn’t get that, at the very least Trump will ignore the court’s ruling.  As a reminder President Andrew Jackson allegedly stated about a Supreme Court ruling written by then Chief Justice John Marshall that he didn’t like: “John Marshall has made his decision now let him enforce it.” (Trump admires Jackson as a “hero.”)

Or Trump could—if the GOP gets control the House and Senate—expand the US Supreme Court to add loyalists who will run in his favor on every case, including that Trump could serve a third term despite the 22^nd Amendment barring that.

I’m not suggesting that a majority of the US Supreme Court would bar Trump from office simply to preserve their own power. In fact, the GOP controlled Supreme Court has already ruled against Trump several times including the unanimous decision in December 2020 rejecting the lawsuit brought by Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton to overturn the 2020 election and an 8 to 1 ruling in January 2022 rejecting Trump’s claim that executive privilege barred the National Archives from giving the House Jan. 6 committee hundreds of pages of documents from his time in the White House.

In reality, the Colorado supreme court ruling that Trump is “disqualified from holding the office of President under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment” is well reasoned and relies heavily on the original intent of the framers of the 14^th Amendment. That means there’s an abundance of valid legal reasons to uphold this decision.

My point is that the Justices of the Supreme Court are human beings who have seen the same actions and words from Trump that we have. And in a case where they are torn on which way to decide, you can’t preclude that their human instinct of self-preservation could lead them to disqualify the dictator in waiting Trump from ever holding office again. And that would 100 percent be the correct decision.

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