The 38-year-old tech entrepreneur says the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling is an ‘attack on democracy’.
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has vowed to withdraw from the GOP primary ballot in Colorado after the state’s Supreme Court ruled on Dec. 19 that former President Donald Trump is not eligible to run for president.
The 38-year-old tech entrepreneur took to X to condemn the court’s 4-3 ruling, which makes President Trump the first candidate in U.S. history to be deemed ineligible to make a White House bid.
Mr. Ramaswamy called the ruling an “attack on democracy” and urged other Republican candidates to remove their names from the Colorado primary ballot if the court fails to reinstate President Trump.
“In an un-American, unconstitutional, and *unprecedented* decision, a cabal of Democrat judges are barring Trump from the ballot in Colorado,” Mr. Ramaswamy wrote.
This is what an *actual* attack on democracy looks like: in an un-American, unconstitutional, and *unprecedented* decision, a cabal of Democrat judges are barring Trump from the ballot in Colorado. Having tried every trick in the book to eliminate President Trump from running in…
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 19, 2023
“Having tried every trick in the book to eliminate President Trump from running in this election, the bipartisan Establishment is now deploying a new tactic to bar him from ever holding office again: the 14th Amendment,” he said.
“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.”
The Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling on Dec. 19 centered on the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection clause,” which bars officials who have engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.
The Colorado high court, which is composed entirely of Democrat appointees, determined President Trump had engaged in insurrection during the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol.
The latest ruling only applies to Colorado’s Republican primary, which is scheduled to take place on March 5.
Mr. Ramaswamy, in his post on X, went on to call the court’s decision “an 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.”
