President Biden on Friday delivered a ferocious condemnation of Donald J. Trump, his likely 2024 opponent, warning in searing language that the former president had directed an insurrection and would aim to undo the nation’s bedrock democracy if he returned to power.
On the eve of the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Mr. Trump’s supporters, Mr. Biden framed the coming election as a choice between a candidate devoted to upholding America’s centuries-old ideals and a chaos agent willing to discard them for his personal benefit.
“There’s no confusion about who Trump is or what he intends to do,” Mr. Biden warned in a speech at a community college not far from Valley Forge in Pennsylvania, where George Washington commanded troops during the Revolutionary War. Exhorting supporters to prepare to vote this fall, he said: “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question is: Who are we?”
In an intensely personal address that at one point nearly led Mr. Biden to curse Mr. Trump by name, the president compared his rival to foreign autocrats who rule by fiat and lies. He said Mr. Trump had failed the basic test of American leaders, to trust the people to choose their elected officials and abide by their decisions.
“We must be clear,” Mr. Biden said. “Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot.”
According to another random lemmy user, the clause actually did originally include the president explicitly, but it was then removed saying the language already covered it so it wasn’t needed.
Not sure if that’s true at all, but apparently it’s recorded history, so if it’s true it’s hard to refute it and say they didn’t mean it?
But maybe they removed it because they saw it as unnecessary? It’d be restating the obvious since it already says insurrectionists can’t be officials, then goes on to list a few examples which were pertinent when the law was created in response to the aftermath of the civil war. In the end it depends whether they decide to interpret part of the clause literally and as more important than the intent of the clause, which seems pretty clear. How they interpret it seems to be a bit up in the air given their party affiliations.
Legal Eagle does a really good run down of the legal aspects here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krVNdQOWYk4