Former Obama adviser David Axelrod expressed concerns on Friday that a court decision excluding former President Trump from the primary ballot could “rip the country apart” amid mounting legal questions about his eligibility. The secretary of state in Maine recently determined that Trump should be disqualified from the primary ballot, citing his conduct during the Jan. 6 Capitol riots as a violation of the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection clause.”
Axelrod, in an interview on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront,” stated, “I have very, very strong reservations about all of this. I do think it would rip the country apart if he were actually prevented from running because tens of millions of people want to vote for him.” He emphasized the need to defeat Trump through the democratic process, saying, “I think if you’re going to beat Donald Trump, you’re going to probably have to do it at the polls.”
Maine’s Democrat secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, mentioned in her decision that Trump had “used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters” on Jan. 6 and was aware of the potential for violence. Axelrod acknowledged that the decision could play into Trump’s claims of political motivation by Democrats, potentially fueling voter unrest.
Axelrod suggested that Trump’s candidacy may serve as a legal defense strategy, framing it as an attempt to prevent him from being president. He noted that Trump’s legal challenges seem to strengthen his position, stating, “We’ve run this experiment, he’s only gained since he started getting indicted. What you thought might be kryptonite for him has turned out to be battery packs, and this is a big one for him.”
The Trump campaign has appealed the Maine ruling, criticizing it as “election interference” and characterizing it as a “hostile assault on American democracy.”
In a statement, Trump campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung said, “the Maine Secretary of State is a former ACLU attorney, a virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden. We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter. Democrats in blue states are recklessly and un-Constitutionally suspending the civil rights of the American voters by attempting to summarily remove President Trump’s name from the ballot. Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy. Biden and the Democrats simply do not trust the American voter in a free and fair election and are now relying on the force of government institutions to protect their grip on power.
A similar challenge in Colorado, currently pending before the Supreme Court, adds to the legal complexities surrounding Trump’s candidacy.
By: Montana Newsroom staff
