During a speech at the Democratic National Convention, Rep. Jamie Raskin scrambled when his teleprompter appeared to malfunction amid an attack on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. As Raskin was explaining the president’s constitutional duties, he froze and paused for several seconds, ostensibly waiting for the teleprompter to resume.
Sharing a clip of the incident, conservative news outlet Townhall wrote, “Did Jamie Raskin have a brain fart? Or is the teleprompter moving slower than Joe Biden?” Similarly, Trump War Room wrote, “Election Denier Jamie Raskin freezes during his DNC speech after the teleprompter presumably malfunctions. YOUR GOVERNMENT IS COMPLETELY SCRIPTED!”
Raskin received pushback from others for not being able to recite the duties of the president under Article 2 without the aid of a teleprompter. “Jamie Raskin pretends he’s a constitutional scholar and says the 2nd Amendment doesn’t protect an individual right,” Second Amendment activist Aidan Johnston said. “Jamie Raskin also can’t tell you what the President’s job is under Article 2 without a teleprompter.”
Earlier this year, The American Tribune reported on comments from Raskin alleging that Congress could disqualify a Trump victory at the risk of “civil war.” During his remarks, Raskin called out voting protocols in red states, claiming, “What I would say is, you know, we’ve got to play defense and offense in 2024. The right to vote is under attack in very specific ways in lots of states, especially in some of the Deep South states, especially in Florida, which I just returned from.”
He continued, “There’s just unbelievable stuff going on there — like, if you have to send a mail-in ballot or absentee ballot, you have to have a — you can only have it taken to the mailbox or the polls by a member of your nuclear family who lives with you. OK? So there’s just a million traps for the unwary that are being set across the country. But at the same time, we do have to get on offense for the articulation of a constitutional right to vote that’s meaningful for everybody in the country.”
Raskin then spoke about the Insurrection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment, suggesting that it has been virtually done away with. He then explained how the issue has been delegated to Congress, where he claimed the legislative body would have to answer to the “rampaging Trump mobs” that their candidate would be disqualified from the election.
“And the greatest example going on right now before our very eyes is Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which they’re just disappearing with a magic wand, as if it doesn’t exist, even though it could not be clearer what it’s stating. And so they want to kick it to Congress, so it’s going to be up to us on January 6, 2025, to tell the rampaging Trump mobs that he’s disqualified. And then we need bodyguards for everybody, and civil war conditions, all because the nine justices — not all of them, but these justices who have not many cases to look at every year, not that much work to do, a huge staff, great protection — simply do not want to do their job and interpret what the great Fourteenth Amendment means,” he said.
Watch Raskin’s teleprompter issue below:
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
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