'Pathetically weak': Conservative George Conway destroys arguments to keep Trump on ballot

Two legal wonks sparred over their interpretations of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment that's being wielded to try and scratch Trump from the 2024 primary ballot.

Conservative attorney George Conway, who has been banging the drum against the 45th president for years, and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig, locked horns on CNN's "The Source" with Kaitlan Collins over whether state supreme courts like Colorado's are able to to nix Trump from the ballot or others like Michigan are right in finding that he should remain on theirs.

The fuss over the amendment is trying to square its intent. It reads: "No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice- President, or hold any office...shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

Honig doesn't see it as a linear law and thinks Congress should be compelled to spell it out in actionable terms.

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"My general criticism complaint about this 14th Amendment effort is I don't think it's up to the states at all," he said. "I think the 14th Amendment is clear on its face that it's up to Congress to tell us how this works.

"And they haven't done that. The only thing congress has done is they passed the criminal law which is to say it's a crime to engage in insurrection and if you do you're disqualified."

Conway called that thinking short-sighted.

"The Constitution refers to the presidency as an office dozens of times," he maintains. "Really, the arguments are pathetically weak."

For him, he's yet find a counter to his textual reading of the amendment.

"All the arguments that I have seen against disqualification are bogus," he said. "Like the one my friend Elie Honig suggested that the only way the 14th Amendment can be enforced is through an act of Congress — that's just not true."

"If it were true then if Congress repealed tomorrow all of the Civil Rights acts enacted from the Civil War to the 60s to the present — that would mean under Section One -- that the states could start resegregating their schools and there would be no way to prevent it. That argument goes out the door."

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