Keep Trump on the ballot, his GOP challengers say

In the hours after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump will not appear on the state’s Republican primary ballot, each of his challengers spoke out against the court’s decision.

The court determined Trump violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, known as the “insurrection clause,” which bars individuals from holding public office after engaging “in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution.

The ruling will likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Trump’s remaining challengers for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination all spoke out against the decision Tuesday night. Ron DeSantis called the ruling “unfair” and a “stunt.” Vivek Ramaswamy pledged to remove his own name from Colorado’s ballot in protest. And both Chris Christie and Nikki Haley emphasized that voters, not judges, should determine who the GOP chooses as its nominee.

All the while, Trump maintains a monumental lead in national polls, sitting at around 60% in FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. His closest challengers — DeSantis and Haley — are in the low teens.

Trump’s competitors have been hesitant to criticize the former president. Each of them — except Christie — pledged to support Trump if he is the nominee, even if he is convicted in any of the criminal cases against him.

But even Christie opposed the court’s ruling, saying the decision is “bad for the country” during a town hall in New Hampshire on Tuesday evening.

“I do not believe Donald Trump should be prevented from being president of the United States, by any court,” Christie said, minutes after the ruling was made public. “I think he should be prevented from being the president of the United States by the voters of this country.”

Christie emphasized his view that Trump’s actions on January 6 were “horribly wrong,” but that Americans “deserve to have a trial before rights are taken away from them.”

Haley gave a similar answer. After a campaign event in Iowa Tuesday, Haley told reporters the decision is “the last thing we want.”

“I want to see this in the hands of the voters,” Haley said. “We’re going to win this the right way, we’re going to do what we need to do but the last thing we want is judges telling us who can and can’t be on the ballot.”

DeSantis took a more conspiratorial position on the ruling, claiming it was a “stunt” by Democrats to help Trump win the GOP primary. He accused Democrats of “abusing power.”

“What the left and the media and the Democrats are doing — they’re doing all this stuff, to basically solidify support in the primary for him, get him into the general, and the whole general election is going to be all this legal stuff,” DeSantis said Wednesday morning.

In a post on X, Ramaswamy called the ruling “an attack on democracy” and an “election interference tactic.”

“I pledge to *withdraw* from the Colorado GOP primary unless Trump is also allowed to be on the state’s ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley to do the same immediately — or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences for our country,” Ramaswamy wrote. No other candidate has pledged to withdraw from the Colorado ballot.