Trump says Supreme Court ballot ruling will be remembered for ‘200 years’ and claims he now needs immunity so he can’t be prosecuted for defeating ISIS and killing the ‘two biggest terrorists in the world’ Soleimani and al-Baghdadi
- Supreme Court justices ruled 9-0 that the former president should remain on the ballot
- Trump said it was a “well thought out” decision that would unite the country
- “You can’t take someone out of a race,” he said Monday at Mar-a-Lago
Former President Donald Trump on Monday welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision to reinstate him in the presidential election as “well made,” saying it would unite the country.
He thanked the judges for their quick work in delivering a ruling that he said would be remembered for another 200 years.
And he urged the court to grant him immunity in the next election case it will consider, arguing that any other decision would leave him open to prosecution for US military actions that killed senior terrorist leaders in the Middle East .
“You can’t take someone out of a race,” he said Monday afternoon at his Mar-a-Lago base in Florida.
“The voters can take someone out of the race very quickly. But a court should not do that. The Supreme Court has seen that.
“And I really believe this will be a unifying factor.”
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Donald Trump can remain on the ballot, in a fatal blow to the states trying to oust him and just 24 hours before 15 states vote on Super Tuesday.
Two and a half hours earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reinstated the former president in the primaries, rejecting the state’s efforts to hold the Republican former president responsible for the riot at the Capitol.
Last week, judges said they would also hear a case examining whether Trump could face criminal charges for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.
On Monday, Trump said lifting immunity would leave him open to prosecution for other cases, such as his attacks on the ISIS terror group.
“I took out ISIS and I took out some very big people from the point of view of another part of the world… two of the leading terrorists… probably the two leading terrorists we’ve ever seen in this world,” he said.
‘And those are big decisions. I don’t want to be prosecuted for it.’
In 2019, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder and leader of ISIS, was killed in a raid by US forces. A year later, Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general, was killed by a US drone strike in Iraq.
(Osama bin Laden, who ordered the deadliest terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in history, was assassinated in 2011 under President Barack Obama.)
Trump said no president would be able to act with a “free and clear mind” if the threat of prosecution hung over him.
The judges made their ruling a day before Super Tuesday, when fifteen states will make their choice.
Trump addressed the cameras at Mar-a-Lago on Monday hours after the ruling
Donald Trump supporters clash with police at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021
Anti-Trump demonstrators protest outside the US Supreme Court before the court ruled on former US President Donald Trump’s eligibility to run for president in the 2024 election in Washington, DC, on February 8, 2024
The Court ruled that states cannot use a post-Civil War constitutional provision to prevent candidates from appearing on ballots. It was said that power rests solely with Congress.
“Big win for America,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.
The ruling ends efforts in Colorado, Maine and Illinois to bar the former president from voting, using a mechanism that disqualifies “candidates involved in the insurrection” from running for power again.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said, “I am disappointed with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision stripping states of the power to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for federal candidates.
“Colorado should be able to keep oath-breaking insurrections out of our ballot.”
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled last year that Section 3 applied to Trump, the first time a court applied the mechanism to a presidential candidate.
But in their 20-page ruling, the justices said only Congress could determine who could run for office.
“States should not unilaterally disqualify Donald Trump from voting,” they said in an unsigned opinion. “The Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling is reversed.”
The case is the Court’s most direct intervention in the presidential election since Bush v. Gore, when it effectively handed the deadlocked 2000 outcome to Republican candidate George W. Bush.