• dhork@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    The 12th amendment states

    But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States

    That seems pretty definitive. The only attack to it I can see (and it’s total bullshit) is that the Originalists on this court may insist on interpreting this amendment based on the state of the Constitution when it was ratified in 1804, and the term limits weren’t passed until 1952.

    • Skyrmir@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      The way around that is making him speaker of the house and having both the president and vice president resign. Speaker doesn’t have any real requirements on it.

      • dhork@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        The Constitution leaves what happens if the Presidency and VP are both vacant at the same time up to Congress, and Congress has passed various Presidential Succession Acts, the most recent being 1947. The language in that Act specifically exempts anyone who would otherwise be ineligible from becoming President.

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Succession_Act

        And this has been enforced in the past; Cabinet Secretaries who were not natural-born citizens have not been included in the succession list. I remember specifically that when Madeline Albright was Clinton’s Secretary of State, she was not on the list because she was born in Prague.

      • BlackRing@midwest.social
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        4 days ago

        I vaguely remember Trump briefly trying to be speaker of the house at some point, or at least talking about it.

        • Skyrmir@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          It’s been floated around for a bunch of politicians. They were talking about making Hillary speaker while impeaching Trump and Pence too.