No one is better equipped to take down felon Donald Trump than the vice president.

Follow this authorJennifer Rubin's opinions

The Supreme Court declined to apply the letter of the law to disqualify Trump under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. But Harris is making the persuasive case that voters should not consider him to be a legitimate candidate. How can a convict who tries to tear down the legal system assume the presidency, which requires an oath to enforce the laws? It boggles the mind.

The Biden-Harris campaign seems to have figured it out: Someone with contempt for the legal system, a mission to tear it down and to employ it without any legal basis against his enemies threatens the core of American democracy. And if there were any doubt about Trump’s nefarious schemes, he now routinely threatens to prosecute his opponents. Former Trump attorney Ty Cobb and a fleet of legal scholars and former prosecutors have warned that his rhetoric erodes support for the legal system and risks inciting violence.

Advertisement

And after weeks of Trump’s threats and smears, all amplified by MAGA sycophants, even taciturn Attorney General Merrick Garland deplored the “escalation of attacks” in an op-ed for The Post. “They come in the form of conspiracy theories crafted and spread for the purpose of undermining public trust in the judicial process itself. Those include false claims that a case brought by a local district attorney and resolved by a jury verdict in a state trial was somehow controlled by the Justice Department,” he said, in obvious reference to Trump and his followers.

Given the ongoing, albeit stalled, federal prosecutions against Trump, Garland was in no position to call out Trump by name or to directly suggest someone threatening and maligning law enforcement has no business in the White House. That’s where Harris comes in.

Biden spent five days in France commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day. In Normandy, he hammered home the need to defend democracy in our lifetime. It’s no mystery who is threatening our democracy. Biden extols the virtues of democracy, freedom, the rule of law and decency with the obvious implication that Trump has none of these. But the campaign needs Harris to challenge Trump and MAGA........

© Washington Post