Trump hails Supreme Court ballot ruling in unhinged Mar-a-Lago speech about Isis, Hillary Clinton and migrants
Former president said the court’s decision allowing him to appear on primary ballots was a ‘big win for America’
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Your support makes all the difference.Former president Donald Trump celebrated a legal victory on Monday after the Supreme Court overturned Colorado’s decision to remove him from its presidential primary ballot under Section Three of the 14th Amendment.
For months, Mr Trump had been fighting Colorado, as well as other states, for invoking the novel “insurrection clause” to disqualify him from the state’s ballot.
The former president was accused of aiding an insurrection when a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6 2021 to try to stop the certification of the election results in favour of President Joe Biden.
But the Supreme Court intervened, saying states do not have the power to remove presidential primary candidates from their ballots under Section Three of the 14th Amendment.
In a topic-ranging rant aired from the former president’s residence at Mar-a-Lago, Mr Trump responded to the ruling, thanking the Supreme Court for the decision and falsely asserting that states wanted to remove him from the ballot because of his well-performing polling numbers.
“While most states were thrilled to have me, there were some that didn’t,” Mr Trump said. “And they didn’t want that for political reasons.”
Voters in at least 16 states, including Colorado, had teamed up with organisations to try and remove Mr Trump from their ballots under the 14th Amendment.
Section Three prohibits those who have taken part in insurrections or aided enemies of the US government from taking office. Petitioners claimed that by using allegedly inflammatory rhetoric on January 6, Mr Trump aided an insurrection. In the ruling, the Supreme Court declined to rule on the technical aspects of an insurrection or whether or not Mr Trump participated in one.
Moments after the ruling was handed down, Mr Trump took to Truth Social to celebrate. “BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!” he wrote.
Speaking from Mar-a-Lago soon after, Mr Trump went on a typical rant, using his string of criminal and civil court cases to assert his innocence and claim that he is owed presidential immunity.
In addition to the 14th Amendment cases, the former president is facing four criminal trials – one of which accuses him of trying to overturn 2020 election results and his alleged involvement in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Mr Trump has asked the Supreme Court to also intervene in that case, claiming he should be absolved of charges because he had presidential immunity. The court agreed to hear the case in April and will make a decision in or before June.
In his speech, he claimed that every president should be awarded full immunity or they may not be able to do the job effectively out of fear of prosecution. As an example, he drew on his experience “taking out” terrorists in ISIS while he was president.
Carrying on with his unhinged, unrelated chain of thought, Mr Trump also used his speech of lash out at his 2016 presidential rival Nikki Haley and what he has branded “migrant crime”.
Mr Trump then went on to claim that prosecutors, like Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought indictments against him and the judges currently overseeing those cases are unfairly politically motivated.
“You have deranged Jack Smith, who’s a Trump hater and represents all the Trump haters, and he’s going wild... But he’s mean, he’s nasty, he’s unfair. And the judges on these cases, they’re all Trump haters, other than we have maybe one or two that I think can be fair,” Mr Trump said on Monday.
The former president continued to rant, speaking highly of his immigration and economic policies while scolding President Joe Biden, before ending his speech with a hope for his next Supreme Court case.
“I hope that the justices because they’ll be working on some other cases, but one in particular, presidents have to be given total immunity,” Mr Trump said.
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