"They march, they hallow. His face a symbol."
Insurrection clause, schminsurrection clause. We should be talking about emoluments when we talk about Donald Trump's eligibility for office.
This week’s soundtrack: Black Math Horseman - “Tyrant”
Over the weekend, we passed another anniversary of the Capitol Insurrection or the Capitol Riot or J6 or whatever you want to call it. In the years since it happened, we’re still arguing about the phrasing, particularly when it comes to the big man and his role in it. One thing it was not, unfortunately to this piano keyboard scarved lady, was “a revolution.”
As you probably know, the adjudication of Donald Trump being an insurrectionist or not is happening at the Supreme Court in early February after the state of Colorado . Chris Geidner of Law Dork has a great breakdown of the argument for keeping Trump off the ballot, as does Jamelle Bouie at the New York Times.
I vacillate some when it comes to this particular conversation. While I respect and an in awe of Bouie’s and Geidner’s arguments (as well as other conversations I’ve had with friends who work in law, politics and the like), I wonder about the paper trail of the big guy’s involvement; his stupidity and well-known distance from reality is, unfortunately, his best defense here. And, lest we forget, “fight” is an all-too-useful part of American politics.
(If you want my actual prediction and not just thought experiments, it’s this: I think the Supreme Court is going to rule to keep Trump on the Maine and Colorado ballots. For one, he nominated three of those judges, but more importantly, this is a group couches everything in “democracy” — see: Dobbs — and the “people” making decisions. I don’t see a world where Kavanaugh, Thomas, Barrett, etc. rock the boat enough in favor of what they consider “activism” instead of just doing nothing.)
Tom Scocca’s full-throated and common sense argument at Indignity reminded me, however, of where I stand on this, more broadly:
Unfortunately, nobody really did anything about it at the time. Senate Republicans, offered the chance to perpetually disqualify Trump by finding him guilty in his second impeachment trial, refused, with their leader, Mitch McConnell, pleading that he didn't have the power to convict a president who had already left office. Congress took no measures to expel Trump's co-conspirators from its own ranks, and they now make up the controlling faction of the ruling majority in the House of Representatives. And Trump is on the 2024 campaign trail.
It’s pretty wild that this hasn’t come up more in the last three years. A lot of Republicans are all too happy to anonymously tell the cocktail party set that they hate that Trump is holding the party hostage and yet, they’ve done nothing about it. They could’ve stopped him from running again in the immediate aftermath and did not convict the man. They could support the Colorado and Maine arguments; they are not.
The rewriting of history is fairly appalling regarding the insurrection; that a sitting (supposedly level-headed) powerful member of Congress is calling insurrectionists “hostages” says a lot about our moment.
And yet, here we are. It’s pretty wild that a coup attempt is being downplayed when the guy at the center of it is very likely to win office again in 10 months and his party is so beholden to them that they are letting it happen.
But another thing happened recently involving the big guy that reminded me just how far we’ve gone on him. It is, in fact, more important to my mind about him and the very nature of being a public official.
The Oversight Democrats last week released a report on the money from foreign governments Trump received while in office. The tally comes out to $7.8 million dollars, which is way more than the salary any federal employee receives.
On my old show at GovExec, I covered the Trump White House’s ethics problems a lot, not just because the audience (federal employees) are held to a much higher standard than the president, but also because it has been so flagrantly poorly covered by the legacy media. The download numbers reflected exactly why no one covers ethics much, but I still did it and still believe that this is a more important story than people realize. In fact, I’d go so far to say that this matters as much or more as the insurrection clause, in that it takes the legitimacy of the office away inherently.
The job of any elected public servant, in theory, is to serve the public. That may seem like basic stuff, but we all know that the reality is as much about ego as it is about public service. But, the basic reward systems for elected officials are adulation, power over other people’s lives and a certain kind of fame. The downside is that you don’t get paid as much and you have to reup for the job every few years via an election of increasingly fickle voters who blame you for McDonald’s prices.
This is where the basic ethics stuff comes in. The one thing an elected public servant — while in office, for sure — cannot do is benefit financially from their position. It goes against the public service notion; no longer is the person serving the public, but serving themselves blatantly. It’s so very boring, plain and obvious that I feel like I shouldn’t have to say it.
The framers saw this and put in the famed emoluments clause. It posits that a person holding office can’t accept any presents (CSRS has a great breakdown) from foreign states or government. Again, it seems obvious to you or I that such a clause exists and should be heeded. But, it did not to the head of the Trump organization, nor seemingly anyone in the United States government since 2015, which is how we get 20 (TWENTY) foreign governments paying Trump directly through his businesses while he was in office. His hotel in D.C. was an obvious avenue for corruption.
Bribes. That’s what this is. Emoluments is just a fancy word for bribes.
The framers put the clause in the Constitution because it was important to correct for a president willing to accept bribes from foreign governments. There isn’t a non-political (there is only impeachment) punishment for those running afoul of the emoluments clause, but the clause is in there. And yet, Donald John Trump is probably going to be eligible to run for president again. More than the insurrection clause in the 14th amendment, it is this bribery that disqualifies Trump to be president again.
I’m sure many of you are tired of my baseball analogies, but here’s another tortured one. Pete Rose. In the past twentyish years, the arguments about performance enhancing drugs have surpassed Rose’s sins – he remains, thankfully, banned from baseball – in criticizing baseball. I could go on about PED guys (I won’t), but the single largest sin any team sport athlete can do is gamble because it affects the result before the game even begins. It takes away the legitimacy of the sporting contest; if the end is predetermined, it’s just theater. It’s professional wrestling.
The supposed sign in every MLB clubhouse reads:
"Any player, umpire, or club official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has no duty to perform shall be declared ineligible for one year. Any player, umpire, or club or league official or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible."
Taking drugs to cheat, stealing signs, using sticky stuff… these are all cheating, yes, but they do not inherently take away the legitimacy of the sport itself.
That’s what the emoluments clause gets to. A president who only cares about himself will only do that in all aspects of the office. We saw this with the big guy’s comments about COVID-19 numbers early in the pandemic; the thousands of sick and dying Americans were not a concern as compared to his goals or his concerns. There was no USA, there was only Trump.
I’m more of an optimist than I’d seem when it comes to elected public servants. However deranged they are, I genuinely believe that the vast majority of ego monsters running for national office truly believe they are doing what is right for the public. I don’t think they’re just selfish dicks who want the public to eat cake; when Mike Pence goes up on a podium and thinks about electrifying gay teens to make them straight, he believes that is in their best interest and the best interest of the United States (he’s woefully wrong, but he believes it). It’s warped and it is decidedly cruel, but the goal is to make the world a better place. In his mind, it’s in the service of the American public.
(This doesn’t make them good people or viable candidates, just better than Trump. A low bar, but the bar nonetheless.)
However the government makes Americans’ lives better, it’s supposed to be the reason the government does things. The people working in government are supposed to be making the world better for the citizenry, not themselves specifically. If someone puts themself over the goals of the country, the whole game is lost. The entire legitimacy of the enterprise is gone.
Lulu Update
Lulu is probably tired of me watching vet shows and saying “She’s a bulldog! Just like you!” whenever a bulldog is on the screen.
