Former President Donald Trump said the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision blocking efforts to kick him off the ballot in Colorado will bring the country together.
At a speech given Monday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after the decision was released, Trump thanked the court and said, “It was a very important decision, very well-crafted. And I think it will go a long way toward bringing our country together, which our country needs.”
Trump’s opponents in Colorado went to court to remove him from the ballot, saying he was disqualified for allegedly participating in an insurrection. In a 4-3 decision, the Colorado Supreme Court agreed, citing Jan. 6, 2021, as Trump’s insurrection moment that disqualified him under Section Three of the 14th Amendment, a provision that bans someone who participated in an insurrection from taking office.
As The Center Square previously reported, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution makes Congress, not the states, the group responsible for enforcing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
The anti-Trump ballot effort that began in Colorado gained traction in other parts of the country. With this latest ruling, though, those efforts are likely quashed.
Trump emphasized the precedent the case set.
“Essentially you cannot take somebody out of a race because an opponent would like to have it that way,” Trump said. “Whether it was a leading candidate or a candidate that was way down on the totem pole, you cannot take somebody out of a race. The voters can take the person out of the race very quickly, but the court shouldn’t be doing that, and the Supreme Court saw that very well.”
The former president has repeatedly blasted his opponents and his legal woes as politically-motivated targeting.
The former president faces nearly 100 criminal charges across several states for his role in Jan. 6, his handling of classified documents, and more. He has recently lost hundreds of millions of dollars via civil suits.
Trump will be on the ballot in more than a dozen states this week for Super Tuesday, where he is expected to handily defeat his opponent, former Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and cement his lead in the presidential primary race.
During his remarks Monday, Trump also looked ahead to his other pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling, namely whether Trump has presidential immunity from criminal charges against him for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
“If a president doesn’t have full immunity, you really don’t have a president because nobody that is serving in that office will have the courage to make in many cases what would be the right decision…” Trump said. “They have to make decisions, and they have to make them free of all terror that can be reigned upon them when they leave office or even before they leave office.”
Trump went on to lament the litany of cases against him.
“I’m being prosecuted by Biden, my opponent, because every one of these things whether it is Fani Willis or [Alvin] Bragg, these are local and state, but they are in total coordination with the White House,” Trump said. “You can’t do that.”
