DEBUNKED: Is Trump Disqualified by the 14th Amendment? Plus, NEW Vivek Ramaswamy Video as a Democrat

Good day to you, my friends. Today on the show we are going to talk about, there’s a new argument that’s being made from mostly people on the left, although there are a few people ostensibly on the right. I say ostensibly because they’re firmly in the never Trump camp. These folks are claiming that President Trump is disqualified from even running for president in 2024 because of the 14th amendment. It’s a pretty interesting argument and we are going to thoroughly debunk it because it is woefully wrong. We are going to talk about that shortly. There’s also a video that’s been going viral on X, formerly known as Twitter of Vivek Ramas Swami back in 2004. Some people are calling this video a bombshell video, claiming that it exposes Vivek for what he is supposed to be. We’re going to break this video down because is it a bombshell? 

Is it a young person being stupid? Well, we’re going to have to watch the video and take a look. We are also going to talk about the upcoming covid lockdowns because make no mistake, we are going to be facing mask mandates. We are going to be facing renewed pressure to get the covid jabs, and we are going to be facing probably some sort of lockdowns, at least in healthcare settings and the like. So what are we going to do as a country, as a people? How are we going to respond this time, given what we know from the last time? We are going to discuss all of that and more. But let’s start with the Vivek Ram Swami clip. This clip has gone wildly viral. Some people say it’s a bombshell, is it? Let’s take a look and find out. 

Reverend Sharpton. Hello, I’m Vivek, and I want to ask you, last week on the show, we had Senator Kerry, and this week and the week before we had Senator Red Edwards. And my question for you is, of all the Democratic candidates out there, why should I vote for one with the least political experience? This 

Is on a hard ball on MSNBC by the have political experience. He’s talking to Reverend Al Sharpen. 

I got involved in the political movement when I was 12 years old and I’ve been involved in social policy for the last 30 years. So don’t confuse people that have a job with political experience. Whoever the head of some local bureaucracy has a job in Cambridge, that doesn’t mean that they have political experience and it doesn’t mean they have the experience to run the United States government. So I think that we confuse title holders with political experience as we have seen with the present occupant in the White House. George Bush was a governor and clearly has shown he doesn’t have political experience. Next one. 

This is clearly not the point of the video. The point of the video is that Vivek was deciding which Democrat candidate to vote for. But it’s funny because while I was listening to that, I thought, okay, Reverend l Sharpton, what have agreed with him even once out of a million times in the course of his political career, probably not, but this is the once that I think he made a valid point that just because you’ve served in government a long time doesn’t make you the most qualified for the position, be that as it may not. The point of this, the point of this and what people are talking about, what you guys are talking about on X, formerly known as Twitter and on Rumble, is, well, Vivek used to be a Democrat. He was deciding whether to vote for John Edwards, the creep who cheated on his wife while his wife was dying of cancer and fathered a child with some mistress. 

John Kerry, another candidate, this Freako Climate Czar who doesn’t own a private jet. I mean, his wife owns one, but he doesn’t personally own one. So that makes it okay. This Freako or Reverend Al Sharpton, one of the most destructive race baiters in modern American history. So yeah, that doesn’t reflect great on Vivek. That doesn’t make me feel confident that he was thinking the right things at the time. Now, this was back in 2004. So is this reflective of what Vivek believes? Now there’s basically two ways that I look at this, two ways that I’m entertaining or two ways that I’m analyzing this video. The first way is, well, a lot of people were idiots when we were young. I mean, I used to be more of a libertarian, God forbid. Thankfully I outgrew that as I educated myself. I think a lot of you guys, I mean a lot of people used to be Democrats and they saw the light. 

They either got a job and started paying taxes or they had a family or they’re just not woke. They used to think the Democrats were the party of the working man. There’s a lot of reasons that you might’ve used to be a Democrat and then switched to Republicans. So I want to be generous on one hand and say, well, back in 2004, that was nine years ago. Were we really going to crucify this guy for being a Democrat when he was basically a kid? That’s my first thought. My second thought though is the viewpoints of the Democrat Party, the policy positions of the Democrat party. Vivek hasn’t come out and disavowed except for speaking out against woke, which to his credit, great, I’m glad that he has been sounding the alarm on e sg and woke ism for a long time. But up until about a year ago, Vivek was repeating a lot of the talking points that were Democrat talking points, Democrat policies, whether it’s high estate taxes, whether it’s anti-Trump, it’s calling January 6th and insurrection, whether it’s pro masks and pro vaccines. 

I mean, the guy made his money in big pharma. A lot of the things that he’s held to up until he essentially launched this campaign were more similar to someone who would vote for John Edwards or John Kerry or God forbid, even Al Sharpton. So is this video a smoking gun? I’m not sure I would categorize it as a smoking gun, but it’s one more piece of evidence that a lot of us are accumulating because I want to like the guy, I like Vivek Ram. He’s so likable, he’s so articulate, he’s so willing to have discussions. He says the right things, he’s unafraid, and yet there’s this grain of skepticism of doubt in my mind about the guy. I just don’t quite trust him. And one of the things that I want to try to do is identify why. Let’s peel back the onion. Let’s dig into this. 

What is it about him, his history, his businesses, his books? What is it about him that makes us like him but not trust him? Because it’s not just going to be a phantom feeling. There’s going to be substance to it. So let’s try to unpack that and we start by analyzing things like this. Yeah, this is a red flag, not a smoking gun, but yes, it is a red flag. So in Nevada, these tribal officers, tribal police officers I should say, are pretty much showing the rest of the country how to handle it. When these ridiculous climate protestors try to shut down our society, it’s our society in the name of the so-called climate crisis. So what these climate protesters did is they blocked a road, and this is what the tribal officers did in response. Take a look at this. Now you can see all the traffic backup because this highway has been closed down. This tribal ranger pulls up and slams through the barricade, slams through the barricade, just busts it right down and then pulls a U-turn, a rather wild U-turn, comes back and seems to head for the protestors themselves, gets out of the truck with a firearm drawn. Aims it at the climate protestors who freak out, who absolutely freak out, pulls them to the ground. They are in an utter panic and he moves ’em off the road. Bam, job done. I think this should be textbook. What these tribal rangers are doing should be textbook for every police organization across the country. You shut down traffic? 

You’re done, you’re arrested, you’re on the ground. Your peaceful protest is destroyed. Now, some people I saw some people on X, formerly known as Twitter saying, well, listen, do we actually want our police to be this aggressive? Do we want our police to be this violent? And here’s the question that I would pose to you in response to that. It’s a valid point, but this is a question I would pose to you in response, these people, all that traffic that we saw backed up on that highway, what if someone’s going to the hospital? What if someone’s having a heart attack? What if someone’s having a baby? What if someone’s bleeding out? What if someone is rushing to the hospital to visit their dying parent? There could be life and death situations that are exponentially worsened if not turned into a fatal event because these brats are sitting in the middle of the road wanting us to abolish fossil fuels and become a socialist nation. 

So you weigh that against the idea of, oh, we don’t want police these officers of the state that are armed that have a license to kill us as private citizens. We don’t want them to be too aggressive. Like no, we don’t. We them to operate within the bounds of their authority. But at the same time, when someone’s violating the law and they’re disobeying the law, yes, they should be removed and they should be removed exactly like this. This was awesome. Meanwhile, the Mrs. American Beauty pageant, this is different than Miss America. Mrs. American is geared towards married women. The winner of the Mrs. American pageant was asked on stage what her most empowered moment as a woman was, and I think we can agree. That’s kind of a dumb question. No one really wants to hear the answer to that question except this answer. Listen to the answer that this mother of seven gave about what makes her feel most empowered as a woman. Take a look. 

When have you felt the most empowered? I have felt this feeling seven times now as I bring sacred souls to the earth after I hold that newborn baby in my arms, the feeling of motherhood and bringing them to the earth is the most empowering feeling I have ever. 

I get the chills up and down my arms, the chills up and down my arms. First of all, she’s gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. It’s hard to believe she’s had seven children. Look at that little figure she’s got, but what a beautiful answer. Aside from the pageantry of the thing that the most empowered she’s ever felt is holding the newborn babies, the souls that she has ushered into the world. I love that so much. It brought a smile to my face. It’s nice once in a while when the viral videos that we are bombarded with on Instagram on X, on TikTok are wholesome and happy and well ordered and good and true and beautiful. And that’s what that one is. On the opposite end of the spectrum, in a public school in Colorado, a seventh grade boy was kicked out of class for having a patch on his backpack. 

I guess this is kind of a fad among younger kids now to put patches of things like video games that they like or other things that they identify with. It’s almost like the way that we, millennials used to use the bumper sticker app on Facebook. We’d send them back and forth and anything that you wanted to be part of your identity, you had a bumper sticker on your Facebook page when al kids do it on their backpack, and this kid had a patch on his backpack that was the Gadsden flag, and he was kicked out of class because the school district claimed that this Gadsden flag patch, this is the don’t tread on me flag. I literally have this flag hanging at my house. The don’t tread on me flag has ties to the slave trade is what the school district said. This is the school district representative or the school representative talking to this seventh grade boy and his mother take a listen to this conversation. 

Oh, okay. Go on. Thank you. Do they know what the gadson flag is? That it’s a historical flag. So the reason that they do not want the flag, the reason we do not want the flag to slave is due to its origins with the slavery and slave trade. That is what was, that’s the reasoning behind them. Him? No, the Gadsden block, the don’t tread on me. Okay. Which is the Gadsden block. Okay. Okay. So what’s going to happen if he doesn’t take it off? I mean, he is able to go. I was actually just telling him I was upset that he was missing so much school. I’m like, ah. So I asked if can he just take his stuff out of his bag and go back to class? I just want him to go back to class. The bag can’t go back and stuff patch on it. 

We can’t have that in and around other kids. So that’s what I was trying and then he said, you were close. So I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, it has nothing to do with slavery. That’s the Revolutionary War patch that was enslaved when they were fighting the British. That’s the revolution. Maybe you’re thinking of the Confederate Confederate flag. Okay, so I’m just here to enforce. No, I amm here to enforce the policy that was provided by the district. And definitely you have every right to not agree with it. I mean, because the U says that he’s allowed to wear that. If you go on their website, it says in the big letters, all I’m saying is that unless there’s a ban on patches period, if you said there’s no patches allowed at the school, you cannot display what you think or anything like that or what cheer or anything like that. 

I think it’s one sided, you know, because you allow some patches, but not other patches. Other kids have patches like other names and the American flag backpacks. Yeah, that was flown during the revolutionary with Yeah, I just don wonder stand that at all. So what I can do if you go onto the A’s web site, yeah, let’s talk to someone because I don’t have a lawsuit. I really don’t. I can have you speak to Jeff Yoko again and then he can refer you to our person at the district because like I said, we’re following district policy is what we’re doing. So the last thing I want is him out of class. That’s the last thing I want. He takes his classes seriously. He studies, he wants to get straight A’s he did that he made honor roll when he was here before. He intends to do that again right now, but it’s hard. He keeps missing 

Class. Okay, it’s just going in circles at this point. I don’t dunno if you guys noticed this, but it seems to me that the demeanor of woke, which is what the school administrator is the poster child for right now, the demeanor of woke is almost always unattractive, shriveled, condescending, lemon. They’re not there to have a good faith discussion. They don’t have a good faith disagreement. I mean she’s so condescending, so unattractive, so shriveled, just like a sour, sour lemon. And you’ll also notice that she deflects responsibility. She’s the one enforcing this, but she doesn’t want to have any discussion, listen to any dissent whatsoever. She can’t be the one. She can’t be the decision maker, right? It can only come from the top of the cult. And of course, this is a school. The ignorance here is shocking of all the institutions to be ignorant about the origin of the don’t tread on may flag. 

Come on. This is from the Revolutionary War. This has nothing to do with the slave trade. And if you look on the school district’s documents about why they don’t allow this flag, well, their reason is a little bit more than she explained. This is a school ignorant of the origins of the Gadsden flag, which like I said, I have hanging outside my house. This is not a bad flag. This is part of our country’s founding. This is a flag to be proud of. And this woman, we heard her over and over deflect responsibility. She doesn’t know anything about it. She’s just here to pass the bad news. She’s just the messenger. Don’t shoot the messenger. I don’t believe that. I think it’s just her way of ignoring this mother’s valid points made about the discrimination that her child is facing. But if you go to the school district’s website and you dig into what policy actually prohibits a patch on a backpack that has to do with this flag. 

They cite anything that glorifies violence, anything that glorifies violence, and they further state that this flag has some modern association with far right-wing extremists. So no, this has nothing to do with the school district’s worry about the slave trade. It has nothing to do with racism. It has nothing to do with, well, anything evil except for the fact that the school district is perpetuating evil against this young man because they’re in a position of power based on what they perceive this family’s political views to be. And I think it’s safe to assume that this family is Republican. This young man got this idea for the patch from reading the Tuttle twins, which maybe explains why he is standing up for what he believes. But the governor of Colorado, by the way, was asked for a response to this and to his kind of credit, it’s hard for me to credit him with anything. 

This is what he said. Obviously the Gadsden flag is a proud symbol of the American Revolution and an iconic warning to Britain or any government not to violate the liberties of Americans. It appears on popular American medallions and challenge coins through today. And Ben Franklin also adopted it to symbolize the union of the 13 colonies. It’s a great teaching moment for a history lesson. Listen, I have my beef with the governor of Colorado, but that is a solid answer. Now it just depends on what this school district will do. So reach out to the school district, tell them in a polite but firm way what you believe the Gadsden flag to represent and how you disagree with the discrimination they’re inflicting on this young man. Okay, so let’s get to this legal argument. I find this legal argument to be quite interesting on its face, but as soon as you peel back the first layer, it is not quite so interesting. 

We are going to debunk this increasingly popular argument from legal scholars on the left and some who are ostensibly on the right, although they’re really just in the never Trump camp. So are they really on the right? Who’s to say this argument that President Trump is disqualified from running for president in 2024 because of the 14th Amendments disqualification clause? Essentially the left doesn’t even want to wait to see if President Trump is convicted. They don’t even want him to be a felon. They just want to kick him out of the self-governance of our nation right now. So the Daily Beast, let’s read this article from The Daily Beast, shall we? The Daily Beast writes, the Disqualification clause found in section three of the 14th Amendment fits Donald J. Trump like a glove. Yes, this is going to be a biased article, but don’t worry, we’re going to be debunking it as we go or as political podcaster. 

Alison Gill asked on the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, if section three of the 14th Amendment wasn’t designed for him, who was it designed for? It’s actually a very astute question, and we’re going to pause right there in this article and say that the disqualification clause in the 14th Amendment was designed for traitors to the United States like literal traitors to the United States. It was designed to prevent those who had defected to the Confederacy and fought against the Union during the Civil War from holding office in the United States of America after they had defected from the United States of America. So her rhetorical question, who was it designed for? Well, it was designed specifically for Confederates who had taken up arms against the United States of America. So the Daily Beast, to their credit, says the historical answer to Gill’s query is of course that it was designed for Confederates trying to get back into the federal government after losing the Civil War. 

And that very same historical context draws a direct analogy to Trump’s efforts to get back into the presidency after losing the 2020 election. Here’s what the disqualification clause says. No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress or elector of President and vice president or hold any office, civil or military under the United States or under any state who having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress or as an officer of the United States or as a member of any state legislature or as an executive or judicial officer of any state to support the Constitution of the United States shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two thirds of each house remove such disability. 

So what word is the left focusing on? Of course, the left is focusing on the word insurrection, engaged in insurrection or rebellion. They’re also focusing on the phrase or given aid or comfort to those engaging in an insurrection or rebellion. It is on that and that alone that this legal argument, if you want to even elevate it to being described as a legal argument is built. Now, the left, of course, believes that President Trump incited an insurrection. That’s special counsel. Jack Smith has indicted Trump claiming that he fomented and organized January 6th an effort to overturn the government of the United States. We all know that that’s not what happened. First of all, the Retag bunch of people on January 6th, even those who committed deplorable acts or who committed violence or vandalism, they were not organized. This was not pre-planned. They had no specific leader, and even if they did, which they didn’t, president Trump was not involved in any way. 

He specifically told people to be peaceful. Now the left ignores all of that because it’s inconvenient to their persecution of President Trump. But this is of course they’re like, oh, an insurrection that happened on January 6th and an insurrection, it’s in the Constitution. This is our way to get President Trump out of the office. This is our way to never have to run against him again to prevent him from ever launching a campaign for president. This is what the Daily Beast writes. The disqualification clause obviously encompasses Trump’s actions to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. It does no such thing. This is what they’re writing. These actions include but are not limited to asking the Georgia Secretary of State to find additional votes for him, conspiring to put forth slates of unelected, fake electors for the electoral college and is called for wild protests on January 6th that led to the attack on the Capitol. 

Now we can debunk these things very quickly. When President Trump was talking to the Georgia Secretary of State, he didn’t say create or create new votes. He didn’t insinuate that there was anything fraudulent. What he was saying is that there were votes for him that were uncounted. Finding valid votes that were uncounted is a totally different thing than asking someone to create a fraudulent vote and everyone in their right mind, which of course excludes the majority of the left knows this. Then of course there is a valid constitutional remedy for electors in states that are contested. Now you can tibble with how President Trump went about that because as president, he’s not in charge of that. States and state legislatures are in charge of that. But that’s a valid legal remedy if an election is contested in a state. So also stupid and the Daily Beast is saying that the word wild President Trump using the word wild about the protests on January 6th that makes him qualified to be disqualified under the disqualification clause of the 14th Amendment. 

It does no such thing. Remember the context of this. If we are interpreting the Constitution the way it ought to be interpreted, then we have to understand the context of the time, what the founding fathers meant, or whoever passed an amendment, what they meant at the time that it was passed. In this case, it wasn’t the founding Fathers, it was around the Civil War and what were they doing? They were trying to prevent Confederate generals, for example, former, maybe not even generals, former congressmen or military officers in the United States Army, the United States Congress from defecting to the Confederacy, taking up arms, engaging in war against the United States and then trying to get back in the United States government after they lost the war. So their definition of insurrection and rebellion does not mean dissent. It doesn’t mean a rowdy protest. It means waging an actual war against the United States government trying to topple the United States government trying to separate states from the United States. 

This is pretty obvious. This doesn’t take rocket science. You don’t have to be a constitutional scholar to know this, but these people hate Donald Trump with such fierce fearsome loathing that this is what they are attacking. What’s interesting here, what’s interesting is that this same argument was levied against Marjorie Taylor Greene ahead of her last reelection for Congress down in Georgia. Again, there were lawyers who filed a case against Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that she engaged in an insurrection and therefore she was disqualified from serving in Congress on the basis of the disqualification clause in the 14th Amendment and that was thrown out. This is what the hill writes about Marjorie Taylor Greene. This very same argument about Marjorie Taylor Greene, a federal appeals court on Thursday. What was the date of this? This was back in November of 2022. A federal appeals court on Thursday instructed a lower court to dismiss Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s lawsuit over a challenge to her candidacy based on the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment ruling that the dispute was no longer relevant. 

A group of voters in March challenged green’s eligibility to run for office under the clause claiming that the congresswoman had engaged in insurrection in connection with the January 6th, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Green sued the Georgia Secretary of States, Brad Raff Asperger over the challenge and asked the court to block the state’s consideration of it. Arguing that the Georgia statute that allows for such challenges was unconstitutional. The District court denied green’s request a decision she appealed, but a state administrative law judge ultimately rejected the voter’s challenge, finding that Green did not engage in the attack on the capitol and was eligible to appear on the ballot. Raff Asperger affirmed the ruling and the Fulton County Superior Court in turn affirmed his adoption of it. The Georgia Supreme Court declined to review the Superior Court’s decision. So this has already been tried and it’s failed against Republican candidates. 

What’s interesting here is that if this legal argument, this disqualification clause of the 14th Amendment, the way that it’s being presented by the left was valid, it would leave it up to individual secretaries of state in states across the country to determine whether a candidate was allowed or eligible to be on the ballot. Because the clause doesn’t say anything about adjudication. It doesn’t say if you’ve been convicted of insurrection or convicted of rebellion. So it’s up to the discretion of the Secretary of State to simply interpret this clause. And you’ll notice further down, further down in the Daily Beast article, that’s what they’re advocating for. That secretaries of state unilaterally keep candidates off the ballot based on their own interpretation of what an insurrection means. This is what the Daily Beast writes. There exists a multitude of ways to enforce the disqualification of Trump. For starters, secretaries of state could simply decide he cannot be on the ballot. 

Can you imagine? They admitted it. It’s always down in the bottom of the article what they actually admit to. They want secretaries of state to decide. So Mark my words, listen very closely here we were caught unawares by George So’s Progressive Prosecutor Project. We saw it happening, we verbally opposed it, but we didn’t understand the extent to which these progressive prosecutors would undermine the law and safety in our cities and use the power of government weaponize it against their political opponents like Donald Trump. I don’t think any of us saw it coming when George Soros was funding these prosecutors. We didn’t see Fannie Willis coming. We didn’t expect Trump to be indicted in Fulton County, Georgia and that that might be the most likely case where he could go to jail during his campaign for president. We didn’t see that coming. So this time around, let’s understand what the left is going to do. 

They are signaling to us what their next strategy is. They are going to use secretaries of state in swing states to keep candidates that they don’t like, like Donald Trump and other Republicans off the ballot. So watch very closely because all of a sudden secretaries of state, these kind of obscure positions, you probably couldn’t even name the secretary of state of your own state. All of a sudden these positions are going to get funding from leftist organizations because they want committed ideologues, leftist ideologues to fill these positions so that when a chance arises for that Secretary of State to keep a candidate off of a very contentious ballot, that committed leftist ideolog is there planted, waiting, ready to do that? And if we Republicans don’t watch out, we are going to be caught unaware when these secretaries of state have been captured. Just like we were caught unaware when district attorneys across the country were funded by Soros and we might’ve tweeted about it, we might’ve talked about it on cable news, but what did we do to stop it? It’s going to happen again in a different way if we don’t put a stop to it. Alright, we have time for one more random thing from the internet, and this is for all you pet lovers out there, all of you cats, moms and dads specifically, this is a man who does spa days with his cat. Take a look. 

Hey Google. 

Hey, stop music. 

What am I talking about? 

Wait, you’re already home. 

This again? 

Yeah, it’s spa day. 

I’m just so over at this point. Come on guys, let’s go. Come on. 

Leave him alone, 

Chase. Come on. 

Hey Google, play 

Jesus. I just don’t understand it to be honest. I just don’t get it 

Anymore. Take the cucumber is off the kitty cat’s eyes, 

Whatever. 

That is hilarious. Thank goodness this is a joke. I would really worry if this was a real, I would really worry if someone really took their cats the small. That’s hilarious. And a light and happy way to end the show today. There were some heavy topics and it’s always nice to be bright and cheery before we end the show. Alright guys, the rest of the show will be over on the Liz Wheeler Show Community on Locals. So join us, liz wheeler.com/locals liz wheeler.com/locals. Thank you for watching today. Thank you for listening. I’m Liz Wheeler. This is the Liz Wheeler Show.