Donald Trump declared Wednesday “A sad day in America!!!” after the Colorado Supreme Court disqualified him from the presidential ballot next year over the January 6 insurrection.
Though Trump did not address the decision during a rally on Tuesday night in Iowa, where he went on unhinged rants against immigration, he’s posted multiple all-caps declarations of fury on Truth Social since the decision was issued late on Tuesday.
“What a shame for our country!!!” Trump wrote on Wednesday.
As with his 91 criminal charges and assorted civil trials, Trump also seized on the Colorado ruling for fundraising purposes.
“Breaking news: Colorado just removed me from the ballot! Chip in now,” the post read.
The Colorado court gave room for Trump to make an appeal, which could go up to the US Supreme Court.
Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said on Tuesday night that the campaign has “full confidence that the US Supreme Court will quickly rule in our favor and finally put an end to these un-American lawsuits”.
Despite confidence from Trump’s team over a future Supreme Court decision, reactions from the Colorado ruling have so far shown just how murky the legal debate surrounding it will be.
Trump’s Truth Social feed is already reflecting this.
On Tuesday night, Trump quoted Jonathan Turley, a conservative law professor at George Washington University who has appeared as a witness for House Republicans seeking to impeach Biden over nebulous claims of corruption.
“This country is a powder keg and this court is just throwing matches at it … for people that say they are trying to protect democracy, this is hands down the most anti-democratic opinion I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Trump wrote, quoting Turley speaking on Fox News.
But Trump truncated a portion of Turley’s interview where he said that though he believes the Colorado court is wrong, “January 6 was many things, most of it not good”.
“In my view, it was not an insurrection. It was a riot,” Turley said.
“That doesn’t mean that the people responsible for their day shouldn’t be held accountable.
But to call this an insurrection for disqualification would create a slippery slope for every state in the union.”
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump from office because the section – referred to as the insurrection clause – bars anyone from holding political office if they took an oath to uphold the constitution but “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” against it.
The section was included in the constitution after the Civil War to prevent Confederate leaders from holding office in the government they had rebelled against.
Turley argues that while Trump incited a riot, it technically doesn’t amount to the insurrection specified in the 14th Amendment.
“If you dislike Trump, you believe he’s responsible for January 6 … this isn’t the way to do it,” he said.
This is just one of the points that will be debated if Trump’s appeal is taken up by the Supreme Court, which has been facing an onslaught of accusations of politics in the court.
As much as the Colorado ruling puts a spotlight on Trump, it will also set up the US Supreme Court – which has historically tried to maintain itself as a neutral arbiter of the law – to take on yet another case entrenched in politics.
Trump appointed three out of the court’s nine current justices, cementing a six-to-three conservative majority in the court that has overturned abortion and affirmative action in the last three years.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has also been facing criticism over the last year for taking gifts and vacations from billionaires, as well as for the conservative activism of his wife, Ginni Thomas.
The court is also set to rule on another Trump appeal, which will decide whether he is immune to prosecution over any charges that come from his Washington DC criminal trial over the January 6 insurrection.
Republicans are already framing the Colorado court’s decision as a Democratic attack against Trump.
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy pledged to remove himself from the Republican primary in Colorado and asked his fellow candidates to do the same in solidarity with Trump “else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences for our country”.
Republican Elise Stefanik, a representative from New York, said in a statement: “Democrats are so afraid that President Trump will win on Nov 5th, 2024 that they are illegally attempting to take him off the ballot.”
Regardless of whether the Colorado ruling is upheld, the debate will probably force scrutiny over Trump’s involvement in the January 6 attack.
Trump maintains that the more than 1,000 people who were arrested after the attack, including 600 who were eventually sentenced, are political prisoners.
He also continues to argue that the 2020 election was stolen, a belief that incited those who carried out the January 6 attack in the first place.
“Election interference!” Trump posted on Truth Social Tuesday night.
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