Andrew Bolt: To ban Trump is to punish voters

Democrats’ efforts to stop Trump from running again is not really about punishing a president — it is in fact punishing voters.

President Joe Biden says he wants to “heal” and “unite” America. So drop this campaign to ban Donald Trump from ever running for office.

Did Trump, now hysterically damned as a fascist who tried to destroy democracy, ever do anything as undemocratic as what the Democrats now plan?

Trump lost the last election. He left office, however ungracefully. But next month the Democrats will try Trump in the Senate on the exaggerated charge of “incitement of insurrection”.

If they win, which will need more Republican votes than they seem to have, they plan to ban Trump from becoming president again.

This has never been done before, but many commentators are cheering, claiming Trump is a menace.

More than 74 million Americans voted last year for Trump.

I get the anger. Trump, as I said last November, was reckless and dangerous in claiming voter fraud cost him the election.

But he’s now paid the price. His reputation has been trashed.

The invasion of Congress by a mob trying to stop Biden from being declared winner was so shocking that even some of Trump’s team quit in shame, even though Trump never asked for or endorsed the violence.

But for Democrats and Trump-hating Republicans to now stop Trump from running again is not really about punishing a president who couldn’t accept he’d lost.

It is in fact punishing voters. It’s robbing them of the right to choose who they want to lead them.

Trump supporters clash with police outside the Capitol building.

More than 74 million Americans voted last year for Trump. The Democrats are now saying those millions must never be allowed to vote for him again.

If the Democrats really believed in democracy, they’d say it was up to the American people — not Trump’s opponents in Congress — to decide if he deserved to be President again.

But the Democrats and their media allies do not trust these voters.

It is hard not to see a new authoritarianism taking hold, with Democrats exploiting the essentially insignificant invasion of Congress by a pathetic rabble to now impose a new Left authoritarianism.

Trump is already banned from Twitter, where he communicated directly with 88 million followers. Banning Trump from running for office is just more of the same.

It tells millions of Trump supporters that they cannot listen to or vote for the leader they want. That Biden’s America is not a nation of unity but political exclusion.