'Enough': SCOTUS warned by conservative no free pass for Trump over new violence threat

According to conservative columnist David French, the Supreme Court should give absolutely no consideration to how Donald Trump's supporters would react if he is banned from running for office — and the court should stick to the letter of the law.

In his column for the New York Times, French claimed the time had finally come to say "enough" over worries the former president will incite more violence, while also maintaining that the 14th Amendment was correctly interpreted by the Colorado Supreme Court when they booted him off the ballot.

More to the point, he added the court's eventual ruling on the Civil War era amendment with regard to the former president is likely to divide the country, and that the justices shouldn't try and find a way around that. They need to step up like previous courts have done in critical cases ranging from Brown v. Board of Education to the recent Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling that threw a woman's right to making private health decisions into chaos.

"This is where we are, and have now been for years: The Trump movement commits threats, violence and lies. And then it tries to escape accountability for those acts through more threats, more violence and more lies," French wrote.

"At the heart of the 'but the consequences' argument against disqualification is a confession that if we hold Trump accountable for his fomenting violence on Jan. 6, he might foment additional violence now," he wrote before adding, "Enough. It’s time to apply the plain language of the Constitution to Trump’s actions and remove him from the ballot — without fear of the consequences. Republics are not maintained by cowardice."

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As French explained, spending time debating the exact meaning of what constitutes an "insurrection" could go on forever, but there is no doubt, "It’s true that Trump wasn’t declaring a breakaway republic, but he was attempting to “seize and hold” far more than the Capitol. He was trying to illegally retain control of the executive branch of the government. His foot soldiers didn’t wear gray or deploy cannons, but they did storm the United States Capitol, something the Confederate Army could never accomplish."

"So no, it would not be a stretch for a conservative Supreme Court to apply Section 3 to Trump. Nor is it too much to ask the court to intervene in a presidential contest or to issue decisions that have a profound and destabilizing effect on American politics," he advised. "Fear of a negative public response cannot and must not cause the Supreme Court to turn its back on the plain text of the Constitution — especially when we are now facing the very crisis the amendment was intended to combat."

Warning that, "If the court rules against Trump, the nation will be told to brace for violence. That’s what seditionists do," he pointedly wrote of the modern GOP, "Republicans are rightly proud of their Civil War-era history. The Party of Lincoln, as it was known, helped save the Union, and it was the Party of Lincoln that passed the 14th Amendment and ratified it in statehouses across the land.

"The wisdom of the old Republican Party should now save us from the fecklessness and sedition of the new."

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