(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) A Democratic lawmaker drew a comparison between the insurrection clause of the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. citizenship requirement to defend efforts preventing former President Donald Trump from being on multiple state primary ballots.
House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, D-Md., claimed on Sunday that blocking Republican voters from supporting Trump isn’t undemocratic, strangely citing the ban on non-U.S. citizens running for president.
Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin defends removing President Trump from the ballot: “Is it undemocratic that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jennifer Granholm can’t run for president because they weren’t born in the country?”
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 31, 2023
“Is it undemocratic that [former California gov.] Arnold Schwarzenegger and [Energy Secretary] Jennifer Granholm can’t run for president because they weren’t born in the country?” he questioned during a Sunday interview on CNN’s State of the Union.
Raskin declared that states have control over their “ballot access” but countered widespread assumptions that the Supreme Court would shut down these contentious efforts as undemocratic.
“I think that the urgency is for the Supreme Court to act, but I think it’s going to be tough for some of them if they want to keep Trump on the ballot. If they’re falling for the argument that this is undemocratic,” he added.
Doubling down on his defense of disqualifying Trump from the ballot, Raskin claimed that such action is actually “the most democratic” part of the Constitution’s presidential requirements.
“Of all of the forms of disqualification that we have, the one that disqualifies people for engaging in insurrection is the most democratic,” he said. “It’s the one where people choose themselves to be disqualified, in terms of your age or where you were born, that’s not up to. But Donald Trump is in that tiny, tiny number of people who have essentially disqualified themselves.”
Raskin’s allegations directly contradict the analysis of legal scholars who highlight that Trump has not been convicted or indicted on any insurrection charges.
His statements come after the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows decided to bar Trump from their respective primary ballots, citing Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 protests as an “insurrection.”
