DeSantis Won’t Go As Far As Withdraw From Colorado Ballot

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made it clear that he is not following in the footsteps of his fellow presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy who promised to remove his name from Colorado’s presidential primary ballot if former President Donald Trump’s name is left out of the ballot.

Ramaswamy had urged other candidates to do the same. During an interview on Newsmax, DeSantis was asked if he intended to withdraw his name from the state’s ballot in solidarity with Trump and he said, “No.”

According to the Florida governor, keeping his name off the state’s ballot would be falling into the left’s trap. He however, expressed a belief that the Colorado Supreme Court decision to disqualify Trump will get overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

His response goes, “No, I think that’s just playing into the left. I think the case will get overturned by the Supreme Court, but I’ve qualified for all the ballots, I’m competing in all the states, and I’m going to accumulate the delegates necessary. That’s the whole name of the game in this situation, but I do anticipate that decision was political and will get reversed.”

After the state Supreme ruled that Trump is not eligible to run for president as he was guilty of “insurrection” over his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, Ramaswamy took to X to condemn the ruling in a lengthy post that began with him calling the ruling “an actual attack on democracy” as well as “an un-American, unconstitutional, and *unprecedented* decision.”

His tweet reads in part, “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. 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.”

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

DeSantis also slammed the ruling in a statement, saying, “The Left invokes ‘democracy’ to justify its use of power, even if it means abusing judicial power to remove a candidate from the ballot based on spurious legal grounds. SCOTUS should reverse.”

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also had Trump’s back on the issue as Haley stated that the decision on whether Trump should be reelected is up to the voters not judges.

For Christie, the lack of actual evidence and conviction makes the ruling wrong. “I don’t think a court should exclude somebody from running for president without there being a trial and evidence that’s accepted by a jury that they did participate in insurrection,” he stated.