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Jeff Timmer of The Lincoln Project was reacting to the 2024 hopeful saying he would be in favor of axing four federal agencies if elected president.
Jeff Timmer of The Lincoln Project was reacting to the 2024 hopeful saying he would be in favor of axing four federal agencies if elected president.
DeSantis is trying to out-Trump Trump by proposing increasingly insane policies, but he’s getting almost zero movement in the polls, even when Trump was indicted for stealing nuclear secrets. Trump may be a carnival barker, but he’s a damn good one. He connects to his base on an emotional level first, then steers them wherever he feels like going on a given day. DeSantis lacks the charisma to pull off anything similar.
The road to DeSantis becoming the candidate is for Trump to get convicted and disqualified from running. Barring that, he doesn’t seem to have a chance.
Convicted felons can still run for office, even from prison.
Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs was arrested in 1918 for publicly speaking out against US involvement in WWI. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for “sedition”. He ran for US President in 1920 despite being in jail - he wasn’t allowed to travel or give speeches, but he was allowed to make one statement to newspapers every week.
Despite being in jail, he still got 3.4% of the popular vote. Warren G. Harding won the election and pardoned Debs in December 1921.
The statute criminalizing the mishandling of classified documents includes in its punishment a bar to running for federal office. If Trump is convicted in the documents case, the law will forbid him from running for president. One caveat: to my knowledge the statute has not been tested in the courts on constitutional grounds, so the Roberts Court will no doubt take the case.