8:19 p.m. ET, December 19, 2023
House speaker and others react to Colorado ruling to pull Trump off the state’s ballot
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel attacked the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot
GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called the court’s decision an “actual attack on democracy.”
“Today’s decision is the latest election interference tactic to silence political opponents and swing the election for whatever puppet the Democrats put up this time by depriving Americans of the right to vote for their candidate of choice,” he wrote.
Christie would not comment directly on the decision since he said he had not yet read it. But he commented that, generally, he believes it would be “bad for the country” if Trump were kept off a ballot by a legal decision, adding there hasn’t yet been a criminal trial proving Trump has incited an insurrection.
“But what I will say is this, I do not believe Donald Trump should be prevented from being president of the United States by any court. I think he should be prevented from being president of the United States by the voters in this country,” he said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said the ruling was “nothing but a thinly veiled partisan attack.” He said voters should be able to decide the nominee.
“Regardless of political affiliation, every citizen registered to vote should not be denied the right to support our former president and the individual who is the leader in every poll of the Republican primary,” Johnson said.
Several Trump allies expressed outrage at the ruling:
- Trump’s former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson claimed Colorado “decided to disenfranchise the people of their state by choosing to remove Donald Trump from the ballot.”
- House GOP Chairwoman Elise Stefanik slammed the decision as “unprecedented, constant, and illegal election interference.”
- Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who campaigned for Trump in Iowa on Friday, asserted on X that the decision was exemplary of “what dictators do,” repeating a line used by the Trump campaign when fundraising off the court’s ruling.
- Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake labeled the judges as “partisan,” calling the decision “HISTORIC election interference.”
The post was updated with more reactions to the Colorado court ruling.
