Former National Security Adviser John Bolton said Tuesday on CNN’s “The Source” that the Colorado Supreme Court decision disqualifying former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot was “incoherent,” and he predicted it will be overturned.
Partial transcript as follows:
KAITLAN COLLINS: Ambassador Bolton, when you look at this, this measure that was put in place to to keep former confederates from returning to power, I mean, what do you make of it being used here?
BOLTON: I think it’s completely misplaced. I think this this Colorado Supreme Court decision is badly wrong for multiple reasons. Number one, the 14th Amendment provides that Congress can pass legislation to carry its provisions into effect, which Congress has done on many aspects. It has not put anything with respect to Section Three on the books since just after the Civil War.
Second, the idea that 50 different state courts can can decide a question involving the highest elective office in the executive branch, interpreting the federal Constitution as to what constitutes an insurrection against the federal government is, is incoherent. And I think undoubtedly the Supreme Court is going to have to clear that up.
In terms of what the framers of the 14th Amendment meant. I think I think it’s quite clear that the radical Republicans in Congress who wanted to suppress the secessionist advocates and governments of the Southern states had seceded, would not provide on this critical question of the offices that that are going to be denied to people who broke their oath to the United States, that you’re going to put decision making authority on that in the hands of the states, including the former secessionist states. That, if that was their intention, they were delusional when they did it.
So I’d be willing to bet a small amount of money here that the Supreme Court, if it gets to the merits of this, if it has to, will reverse. There’s there’s no other logical way you can apply this. And it would sow chaos in elections as far as the eye could see.
COLLINS: Well, and I think it’s important for people, maybe if they don’t watch The Source every night and haven’t heard from you since you left working for for Trump when he was president, you have been quite critical of him and the idea that he could be back in office.
But you’re saying that that the way that that should be achieved, if that’s what someone is trying to do here, shouldn’t be through a ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court that it should be a decision for the voters? Is that what you’re saying?
BOLTON: Well, ultimately it should be. But if this case – and I do think the Supreme Court will take it — that they they should not let this kind of erroneous decision rest out there because other cases are going to be brought, you can see it already — this has to be something that Congress itself, if they want to enact legislation — which they haven’t done for 150 years — about what the meaning of Section Three is, then it’s not up to the states to make it up as they go along.
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