This week’s Liberal Media Scream is a five-screamer featuring an ABC host and former Clinton handler acting as judge, jury, and executioner of former President Donald Trump and his effort to remain on the 2024 primary ballots and let voters, not partisan state officials, decide his fate.
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, on his Sunday show This Week, was quizzing his panel about the campaigns in some states to declare Trump ineligible for election because an official decided that the former president triggered a 14th Amendment ban on insurrectionists.
On his show, which occurred the day after the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, one of his panelists suggested the Supreme Court will decide Trump is guilty but that it will be up to Congress and not the states to erase the GOP front-runner’s name off of ballots.
“If you say he engaged in insurrection,” Stephanopoulos said, “I don’t see how you can escape the plain meaning of the 14th Amendment and say he’s qualified to run for office.”
Panelist Donna Brazile, an influential liberal and former acting Democratic Party chairwoman, told her host, “I totally agree with you, George.”
From the roundtable on Sunday’s This Week on ABC:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Sarah, what’s your guess on what the court does here?
SARAH ISGUR, SENIOR EDITOR OF THE DISPATCH: I think you’ll have the Supreme Court hold that he is not disqualified from being on the ballot. They’ll overturn the Colorado Supreme Court.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The question is, how will they do it though?
ISGUR: Correct. I think they’ll say that, in fact, the 14th Amendment makes clear it’s up to Congress. If Congress can requalify someone by a two-thirds vote, there’s no timeline on that. Which means that, you know, as one of the amicus briefs has pointed out, it’s really supposed to be post-elections about holding office, not running for office. And so I think they’ll say it’s really Congress’s job. The states can’t make up their own standard. Is it beyond a reasonable doubt? Is it more likely than not? Et cetera. What’s interesting to me will be whether or not the Supreme Court goes out of their way in order to get those three — Kagan, Sotomayor, Jackson votes — in saying, “yes, it was an insurrection and yes, he engaged in it, but it’s up to Congress.”
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STEPHANOPOULOS: I don’t see how they can do that, Donna Brazile. If you say he engaged in insurrection, was the question I asked Nancy Pelosi, I don’t see how you can escape the plain meaning of the 14th Amendment and say he’s qualified to run for office.
DONNA BRAZILE: I totally agree with you, George.
Brent Baker, the vice president of research and publications for the Media Research Center, explains our weekly pick: “Another example of how Stephanopoulos remains a Democratic partisan first, a journalist a distant second. No true journalist would weigh in with a definitive conclusion on what the Supreme Court should do weeks before a ruling on such a contentious issue which divides Americans. Stephanopoulos has clearly put himself in the camp with those who want to deny the public’s ability to vote for whomever they prefer. So much for saving democracy from Trump when you want to subvert the process.”
Rating: FIVE out of FIVE SCREAMS.