In video from February that has now gone viral, election denier Jamie Raskin, the radical leftist congressman from Maryland, said civil war could erupt if former President Donald Trump defeats Vice President Kamala Harris on November 5.
Raskin, who falsely claimed Trump didn’t win the presidential election in 2016, delivered the irresponsible incendiary remarks at a bookstore in Washington, D.C.
If Trump wins, Raskin warned, he and other insurrectionist leftists could use the 14th Amendment to the federal Constitution to prevent Trump from taking office.
Democrats ruled out such a plan in March, but that could well change when they face another four years of Trump.
The Threat
Raskin delivered the threat at the Politics and Prose bookstore during a colloquy with other hate-Trump leftists. At the time, the U.S. Supreme Court was considering the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to disqualify Trump from running on the state’s presidential ballot.
The state court agreed with those who argued that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment prohibits Trump from running. Trump supposedly urged protesters to breach the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 as Congress was certifying the 2020 presidential election.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Raskin fretted that SCOTUS would find in Trump’s favor, which it eventually did in ruling that only Congress, not a state, can disqualify a candidate under Section 3. Raskin complained that SCOTUS would not do the bidding of hate-Trump leftists:
And the greatest example going on right now before our very eyes is Section three of the 14th Amendment which they’re just disappearing with a magic wand, as if it doesn’t exist even though it could not be clearer what it’s stating.
Raskin rightly predicted the court’s decision, then warned of what would come because of it. If the states can’t stop Trump from becoming president because he “engaged in insurrection or rebellion,” then Congress would. Thus did Raskin speculate that Congress might disqualify Trump. That would spark a civil war.
“And so you know they want to kick it to Congress,” he continued:
So it’s going to be up to us on January 6, 2025 to tell the rampaging Trump mobs that he’s disqualified and then we need bodyguards for everybody and Civil War conditions all because the nine justices, not all of them, but these justices who have not many cases to look at every year, not that much work to do, a huge staff, great protection, simply do not want to do their job and interpret what the great 14th Amendment means.
Despite Raskin’s irresponsible rhetoric, in March, after SCOTUS struck down the Colorado court’s decision, Democrats said they wouldn’t try to disqualify Trump’s victory under Section 3 of the 14th.
“We’re not election deniers,” the Michigan Democrat Senator Gary Peters told Roll Call. “This is all about the ballot box. So this is about democracy, and the voters get to decide who they want to have as their elected officials.”
Radical leftist Representative Ted Lieu of California, a manager in Trump’s second impeachment trial, said likewise.
“I don’t think people should object just because they don’t like the outcome of the election. That’s what Republicans do, and that’s just called being sore losers,” he told the website.
Raskin himself said disqualifying Trump under Section 3 was “dealing in a sequence of hypotheticals.”
Election Denier
Maybe, but Raskin himself was one of the “sore losers” in 2016. When Congress met to certify Trump’s victory on January 6, 2017, Raskin challenged the electoral college vote on the grounds that Florida’s electors were illegal.
“I have an objection because 10 of the 29 electoral votes cast by Florida were cast by electors not lawfully certified because they violated Florida’s prohibition against dual office holding,” Raskin said.
Presiding over the session that day was Vice President Joe Biden, who asked Raskin whether his objection was written and signed by a senator. No senator had signed it, so Biden overruled Raskin’s objection.
Raskin joined a parade of Democrat election deniers, all of whom Biden shut down.
In November 2022, Raskin said election deniers must be ignored.
“I’d be willing to grant, okay, you don’t accept the election as it comes down from the administrative authorities, the election officials, but if you had a challenge in court, and the courts rejected every allegation of fraud and corruption … with respect to Donald Trump’s big lie, then in a democratic society, you’ve got to accept that,” he said.
Election deniers, he said, are “outside the Constitutional order and the rule of law.”
Where a Section 3, 14th Amendment challenge to a Trump victory will put Raskin and his ilk he didn’t tell his enthusiasts at the bookstore.
