Could Donald Trump conduct his re-election campaign for president from a prison cell? Although it may seem unlikely given the several severe legal matters the former head of the free world is now dealing with, it has happened before in US history.
Actually, it has already occurred twice, in the situations of presidential aspirants Eugene V. Debs and Lyndon LaRouche.
Trump, who was charged with attempting to rig the 2016 US election and appeared before a court in Washington on Thursday, may have followed in their footsteps when he declared that his campaign would continue even if he was found guilty.
Experts claim that the Constitution does not forbid it. These are the accounts of the far-right polemicist and the union leader who ran for office while incarcerated.
THE ANTICOPITALIST DEBES
Eugene V. Debs, who was born in 1855, may not be well-known to the general public now, but in his day he was a well-known politician whose actions routinely made the news.
And for American left-wing activists, he continues to be a defining figure. One of his fans, Senator Bernie Sanders, even produced a documentary on the fervent anti-capitalist and union leader who traveled the nation to fight workers’ rights in 1979.
Debs campaigned for president of the Socialist Party five times, and in 1920 he did it from a jail cell in Atlanta. He had been found guilty of urging Americans to oppose conscription to World War I in the summer of 1918 and had received a 10-year jail term as a result.
“I’ve been charged with hindering the war. I’ll confess it. During his trial, he addressed the jury, saying, “Gentlemen, I detest war.
In the end, Prisoner No. 9653 received more than 900,000 votes.
In 1921, his sentence was mitigated, and he was granted parole; nevertheless, Debs passed just five years later.
THE CONSPIRACY THEORIST LAROUCHE
Eight times in all, Lyndon LaRouche ran for president, running in each election from 1976 until 2004.
He was a 1922-born far-right polemicist and conspiracy theorist who started his political career on the extreme left during World War II before creating the US Labor Party, whose platform he ran on in 1976.
Later, LaRouche, who passed away in 2019 at the age of 96, campaigned as both an independent and a Democrat, much to the displeasure of the party.
He developed far-right views throughout his life and was often charged with anti-Semitism, which he vehemently rejected.
He denied the existence of climate change and supported other conspiracy theories, such as the idea that Henry Kissinger was a Soviet “agent of influence” or that Britain’s Queen Elizabeth was engaged in drug trafficking.
LaRouche received a 15-year jail term for tax evasion in the late 1980s. This did not deter him from contesting the 1992 election while serving a federal sentence.
While he was in his cell, he aired taped messages on the economy and education. Just over 26,000 people cast ballots for him.
LaRouche had previously been referred to as a “good man” by Roger Stone, a close friend of Trump, who also stated he was “very familiar with the extraordinary and prophetic thinking of Lyndon LaRouche.”
