Former president sidestepped signing state’s loyalty oath, which opponents Nikki Haley and Chris Christie also have not signed
Joe Biden’s 2024 election campaign has lambasted former president and most likely Republican opponent Donald Trump for failing to sign a loyalty oath in the state of Illinois, in which candidates pledge against advocating an overthrow of the government.
The Biden campaign was responding to an investigation by Illinois news outlets WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times, which reported that Trump sidestepped signing the McCarthy era voluntary pledge that is part of the midwestern state’s package of ballot-access paperwork submitted by 2024 electoral candidates last week.
That omission came days before the third anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, for which Trump has been indicted for his alleged role in efforts to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory. It’s a departure from 2016 and 2020, when Trump signed the voluntary oath.
I wasn’t being sarcastic. This “I won’t try to overthrow the US government” pledge was aimed at Communists in McCarthyism, and here it tells us something important, since Trump did sign it the last two times he ran, and declined to this time.
Sorry, I was trying to do one of those “oh, I thought they were being serious for a second there,” kind of bits and instead just made my whole gag confusing. You are absolutely right, though.