If Trump wins in 2024 he’ll use Colorado ruling to keep Dems off the ballot: ex-aide
Former White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin sounded the alarm on Tuesday about the Colorado ruling that barred Donald Trump from the ballot citing the 14th Amendment. Her fear, she said, is that he'll use it himself if he wins in 2024.
"The View" co-hosts on Tuesday were addressing some of the main news stories they'd missed while off for the holidays.
"Now, you remember, none of this would have been happening had he let the people decide who they wanted to be president," said Whoopi Goldberg. "He didn't like that. He didn't want that. And he has spent all of this time fighting that and saying that, you know, it was a lie, it was this, it was that. He's been tossed out all over the place and now suddenly they're paying attention to the law. Where has everybody been? Did you just wake up and go, oh, damn?"
She noted it is still up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will ultimately make the decision on the Colorado ruling, which states that the ex-president can't stand for public office because he took part in an insurrection. A similar ruling was also made in Maine last week.
"They say it will be up to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide if they bar him," said Goldberg. "If you do this kind of stuff, you can't run, but apparently we always have to recheck with this fool because every time he does something they say, oh, well, they didn't mean him."
Sunny Hostin, a former federal prosecutor, said that so many of the Republican appointees to the Supreme Court claim to be textualists and she thinks that if the text of the law really is followed, then Trump would not be on the ballot.
But it was Griffin, a former aide in Trump's White House, who cautioned how Trump might weaponize the ruling in Colorado to attack his foes.
ALSO READ: Judgment year has arrived: Will America pass her greatest test yet or will she fail?
"I'm conflicted," she began. "I tend to be more of an originalist. When you look at the law, you think of the precedents. If this holds, if Donald Trump becomes — if he, God forbid becomes president this time next year — he could weaponize that ruling to keep Democrats off the ballot, in the same way, he says Joe Biden is a threat to democracy."
She noted that there are secretaries of state and appointed judges who are all firmly in Trump's back pocket who will be "loyal to him. They will weaponize the same decision."
"Democracy is very fragile right now," she continued. "A third of Republicans don't believe the last election was legitimate. I believe it was. My fear is for the first time, they will say I can't cast my vote for Donald Trump and the system threw it out. Then it will be true."