The Supreme Court heard arguments on Thursday on whether Colorado could remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot.
Late last year, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president in 2024, should be kicked off the ballot after six voters represented by lawyers from a leftist legal group argued that he was ineligible based on the “insurrection clause” of the 14th Amendment.
During arguments on Thursday, justices seemed skeptical of the argument in favor of throwing Trump off the ballot.
“I think that the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States,” liberal Justice Elena Kagan said, according to NBC News. “It seems quite extraordinary doesn’t it?”
Justice Samuel Alito said that it would create an “unmanageable situation” if states were able to remove presidential candidates from the ballot.
Trump’s lawyers argued that the characterization of the former president’s actions on January 6 was incorrect.
“For an insurrection, there needs to be an organized, concerted effort to overthrow the government of the United States through violence,” Jonathan Mitchell said. “We didn’t concede that it’s an effort to overthrow the government either. None of these criteria were met. This was a riot. It was not an insurrection. The events were shameful, criminal, violent, all of those things but did not qualify as an insurrection as that term is used in Section 3.”
During a speech after arguments wrapped up, Trump said that the effort was “election interference” by the Democrats and was optimistic that the court would rule in his favor.
“Watching the Supreme Court today, it’s a very beautiful process,” Trump said. “I hope that democracy in this country will continue, because right now we have a very, very tough situation with all the radical Left ideas, with the weaponization of politics, they weaponize it like it’s never been weaponized before. It’s totally illegal, but they do it anyway. It has to stop.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP
Trump went on to discuss the border crisis, slamming President Joe Biden for the millions of illegal immigrants who have crossed into the United States under his watch. Recent polling shows Trump pulling ahead of Biden in key swing states and even leading nationally in some surveys.
Before the arguments began, Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Roger Marshall (R-KS), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) held a press conference in front of the court decrying the possibility that Trump could be removed from the ballot.
“We want to fight for the right of ‘We the People’ to elect our next president, not a bunch of judges. And I just want to make it perfectly clear again why this is so important to people back home. They feel like this is yet another attack by Joe Biden, on their constitutional rights,” Marshall said.