In 2016 and 2020, before the Jan. 6 insurrection, Trump did sign. President Joe Biden, who signed it, questioned why Trump “can’t bring himself to sign a piece of paper saying he won’t attempt a coup to overthrow our government.”
President Joe Biden’s campaign condemned former President Donald Trump Saturday for sidestepping a decades-old, Illinois ballot-access tradition in which candidates pledge not to “advocate the overthrow of the government.”
Biden’s statement came in response to a WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times report published earlier Saturday that Trump didn’t sign the voluntary loyalty oath as part of his package of ballot-access paperwork submitted Thursday to the Illinois State Board of Elections.
That omission — days before the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection in which Trump has been charged — marked a departure from 2016 and 2020, when Trump signed the oath.
“For the entirety of our nation’s history, presidents have put their hand on the Bible and sworn to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States — and Donald Trump can’t bring himself to sign a piece of paper saying he won’t attempt a coup to overthrow our government,” Biden campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said. “We know he’s deadly serious because three years ago today he tried and failed to do exactly that.
“This is the same man who thinks American troops who died protecting the ideals outlined in the Constitution are suckers and losers — yet calls the convicted felons who violently assaulted and killed police officers on January 6th ‘hostages,’ ” Tyler said. “He can’t fathom putting anything — our country, our principles or the well-being and safety of the American people, above his own quest for retribution and power.”
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