When push comes to shove, votes are all counted, and Donald Trump may win in 2024. If so, the vice president– herself a candidate for president – will have to certify Trump’s win. Will she?
This election is unlike any other, but that one particular – certification of the win if Trump is the People’s choice –must be smooth. Anything else would be utterly undemocratic.
So, where are we?
Unlike any past race for president, the incumbent party pressured the winner of their primaries to cede his nomination to his vice president. Odd, never happened before, undemocratic.
Unlike any prior race, the incumbent party – abusing the Justice Department – brought politically motivated lawsuits against the opposing party’s candidate, violating constitutional and statutory law to disqualify, imprison, bankrupt, or intimidate. Strange, unsettling, undemocratic.
Unlike any past race, the incumbent party initiated two impeachments against a sitting president, abandoning due process and precedent, aiming to stop his return to politics. Undemocratic.
Unlike any past race, after President Trump’s election win in 2016, the Obama-Biden White House, Clinton crowd, Justice, FBI, FISA, intelligence community, and Congress initiated a now-disowned plan to undermine his authority by asserting Russian collusion. Undemocratic.
Unlike any past race, the tenure of President Trump was muddied, undermined, and in many ways hobbled by those who disagreed with his conservative fiscal, moral, and national security policies, style in conduct of foreign and domestic policy, and disliked him. Undemocratic.
Unlike any prior race, the 2020 race – which concluded in the certification of Biden and Harris as president and vice president – contained COVID-driven election irregularities linked to new rules and the COVID virus. To stop future fraud, legislatures reversed many changes.
Unlike any prior presidential election, the 2024 race has been marred by two assassination attempts and was preceded by a near assassination of a Supreme Court Justice, with Democratic rhetoric arguing Republicans are an “existential threat” to democracy. Bizarre, undemocratic.
Since when has America allowed, let alone encouraged, political violence? First 2020 street riots, then anger at the Supreme Court, chants of death to “enemies of the people?” undemocratic.
Since when has one candidate – without a single primary vote for president – not only tried to humiliate, imprison, bankrupt, and silence – gag orders – the other, but called him an “existential threat” to democracy, demonizing him as the “end of democracy?” Never, undemocratic.
So, now is the moment of truth. If Donald Trump wins, despite the smears, detractors, false allegations, and media-driven distaste; if Americans pick him as our next president – and Democrat-led swing states certify the Republican electors, what next?
Next is the 12th Amendment, which requires the sitting vice president – herself the presidential candidate who thinks Trump an “existential threat” – must do her clerical job, open envelopes, and declare Trump president, giving him the long-awaited second term.
The 12th Amendment says States “shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States” the state’s choice of president and this shall be “directed to the President of the Senate,” namely the Vice President, who “shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted.”
But the zillion-dollar question: Will a presidential candidate who came to her role undemocratically, complicit in abusing the Justice Department to persecute her opponent, interfere in the election, now do her job?
Can the Nation count on Kamilla Harris, who hates Trump, and thinks him an “existential threat,” to act constitutionally, follow the 12th Amendment, and certify Trump as president if the election is close?
Bottom line: The Constitution is about to be tested. Will a liberation theologist, closet Marxist, with little respect for process, truth, or her opponent, certify him? She better, if he is elected. Anything else would be undemocratic – and unconstitutional.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).
