If only the Olympics had a category for mental gymnastics.
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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Explain Like I'm Five
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Just because somebody says so, doesn't mean it's true.
Nice try tho
The constitution clearly doesn’t matter given that insurrectionists can’t hold office and he is assuming office. The god kings rule us now and whatever they believe is law.
For real. All these law and order fetishists never once consider that the criminal will just break the law anyway. Fuckin law perverts
No. I think being "elected" means winning the actual electoral votes and having the results certified.
If he really did had his victory "stolen" (which there were insufficient evidence of btw), then that would would not qualify in sense of the 22nd amendment, since the electors voted Biden and congress certified Biden, so the orange dickhead legally were only elected to one term.
Someone's claims have no legal weight. (just like a "concession" does not have legal weight either)
TLDR: Basically if orange dickhead's claim is "I should have been legally declared winner, but did not because 'it was stolen by democrats'" then its not really inconsistent.
His argument has legal inconsistencies. It's been soundly rejected by every authority with any say in the matter, so ... You're entirely correct. If his argument were to be accepted, then he couldn't be president.
A legal argument being rejected also rejects the parts that would harm the person making it, as well as the parts that would help them.
It's like a person in prison yelling that they're innocent. You can say what you want, but the decision has already been made.
This is an interesting question IMO. I think his followers argument would be that while he won the election (in their opinion), he was denied the opportunity to return for a second term. But to your point, the 22nd amendment doesn't differentiate those two nuances. So yes, if they believe he won in 2020, it could be argued that he isn't eligible. But then that opens up a while hornet's nest of future election abuse opportunities.
Invalidating an election four years ago with votes cast by millions so you can try and invalidate a next election with votes cast by millions of Americans in order to weakly claim a constitutional loophole… what could go wrong? Don’t sink to their level.
I think it's logically consistent to say "It was incorrect that I was not declared the winner of the election, and I should have served the corresponding term. But since the government did not recognize my election victory and I did not serve the term, I am still eligible to serve another term". I think it's inconsistent to say that Trump was elected for the purposes of the 22nd amendment, but was not elected for the purposes of serving the term.
(Please don't mistake me though; although I think Trump's position in this particular matter is logically self-consistent, it is not consistent with reality. He lost that election.)
This would only matter if they cared about facts, or had any scruples or shame.
This is the actual ELI5. Either you care about the rules, in which case this will be his second term and it's ok; or you don't care about the rules so it doesn't matter
Constitutionally, I think “being elected to the office of President” means winning the actual Electoral College vote (which isn’t what Trump’s supporters are disputing).
You are probably correct. I mean, in reality neither is true until and unless the SCOTUS were to weigh in (so, just take a wild guess at what they'd choose?), but I would bet that's the justification they would use.
I think its just a 9-0 ruling that "claiming to have won an election" does not equate to being "elected" in the legal sense. It'd be silly even for the liberal justice to say he's ineligible, because of his claims that he won.
And while I agree with you, he (and his cohorts) believe he won in 2020. If the Democrats changed course, and claimed that he actually won, then I would think that would make his current term invalid.
Funny things about that though. Despite what MAGA thinks, you can't just say something and make it be true.
Bottom line, he did not hold the position of president for the past four years, so there's no reasonable way to say that they should count against his term limits.
They believe he won the "election" in that he should have been awarded the most electoral college delegates. They might argue that the electoral college voting of 2020 was invalid, but you can't retroactively change the result.
Like, if Trump claimed to have called Shotgun first, but Biden actually called it first and then Biden got to ride in the front seat. On the ride back, you couldn't say Trump can't call shotgun because he rode in the front seat.
Trump wasn't president, because he didn't win. He still claims he should have won, but that's both a lie and irrelevant to the Constitution. He could also claim to have been born in Ethiopia to foreign parents, which would also disqualify him from being President, but that would also be untrue and irrelevant.
He did incite and support a terrorist attack and attempted insurrection, which should disqualify Trump from holding any office, but we don't have a functioning justice system.
Okay, loophole time: what if he runs as VP in 2028, and after inauguration, the newly elected president resigns? He wouldn't technically have been elected, and the amendment doesn't mention being barred from actually serving more than twice.
That's definitely gonna be a supreme court question. Who knows how they'd rule.
There's also the loophole with being chosen as speaker of the house (which does not have to be an elected representative) then being Acting President.
It actually does.
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
(Edited to add) And from the 12th amendment:
But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
You can be elected twice and you can serve for no more than 10 years total.
I'm looking at what you posted and still don't see it. Where does it say Trump can't run for VP or cannot become President after being elected VP?
D'oh. I only thought the rest of the comment and then submitted as it was because I needed to go find the text to copy.
And from the 12th amendment:
But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
You can only be elected president twice. If you serve more than two years of someone else's term you can only be elected once. If you can't be president you can't be vice president.
So if you're elected once, then serve as VP and the president goes away and you serve as president for 2 years and a day, you've already been elected once so you can't run again, and you can't be VP because you can't be the president.
If you've been elected twice you can't be VP, so you can't get any extra time that way.
Since the 22nd amendment only explicitly bars you from being elected, it could be argued that you still meet the eligibility requirements laid out in Article II; that is, you're only explicitly barred from being elected, not from holding office.
We've definitely seen some very concerning Supreme Court rulings recently, so it's unfortunately not as clear-cut as we would hope.
I feel like if we get to that point, we've given up on the constitution. "He can't run for president because he's term limited, but he's still eligible to be president, therefore we can make him vice president so the president can resign and he can be president" is such an abuse of the term "eligible" where you turn "cannot be elected but otherwise good to go" into "eligible to be in the highest elected office in a Democratic government".
If the way it's written isn't clear cut enough then the court would find a way to say anything wasn't clear cut.
Yes, but some constitutional literalists tend to be quite ... literal.
"The authors of the 22nd amendment clearly knew the difference between holding office and being elected to office, because the text of the amendment distinguishes between the two, yet still chose to explicitly only bar from election."
theoretically you have to be eligible for the position of president in order to be vice president.
Then again, you theoretically couldn't be president after attempting to stage a coup but yk anything goes these days.
Yes, you are correct.