“BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!” he wrote.
Moments later, he referred to the next question before the justices that could affect his electability — he has challenged a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that said he is not protected from criminal prosecution by presidential immunity. The Supreme Court’s decision to take that case delayed Trump’s D.C. federal trial for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election results until at least late summer, just a few months before the general election. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case next month.
In a radio interview shortly after Monday’s ruling, Trump said it “will be of equal importance” how the court rules on his sweeping claim of immunity from prosecution over actions taken while president.
“A president has to have immunity or they won’t be able to function,” Trump told Boston radio host Howie Carr. “They’ll be ceremonial. So I think that’s a very important one coming up.”
President Biden, the White House and his campaign have largely avoided commenting on the Colorado case. On Monday, Quentin Fulks, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki that the Biden team is not particularly interested in the court’s decision.
“We don’t really care. It’s not been the way we’ve been planning to beat Donald Trump,” Fulks said. “Our focus since Day 1 of launching this campaign has been to defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box. And everything we’ve done since the president announced back in April that he’s running for reelection is to build an infrastructure and apparatus to do so.”
On Monday, it wasn’t only Trump celebrating the decision. Some people who have been suggested as Trump’s potential running mates jumped online to declare the ruling a win for their party’s presumptive nominee.
“The U.S. Supreme Court REJECTS Colorado’s clearly political abuse of our democracy,” Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) wrote on X.
“A unanimous, huge win for President Trump and our country against the anti-democratic radical left.,” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote on X.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), chair of the House Republican conference, called the decision “a victory for the American people.” She accused those behind the efforts to kick Trump off Colorado’s ballot — led by a former GOP legislator — of participating in a “dangerous attempt by the radical Left to suppress votes.”
“We the people decide elections, not unelected radical leftists,” Stefanik said in a statement. Stefanik voted against the certification of electoral college votes for Joe Biden and has promoted debunked conspiracy theories regarding the 2020 presidential election.
And South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R) wrote on X that the Supreme Court “acted swiftly and UNANIMOUSLY to restore law and order and protect the right of the American people to choose their President.”
House Republicans also responded to the decision with both glee and attacks on those who had sought to keep Trump off Colorado’s primary ballot.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who joined an amicus brief that argued that the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision “tramples the prerogatives of members of Congress,” said the court “affirmed what we all knew: The Colorado Supreme Court engaged in a purely partisan attack against the front-runner for the Republican presidential primary.”
He added, “States engaging in the same activist, undemocratic behaviors should take notice and leave it to the American people to decide who will be president.”
Even Republicans who have been critical of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election praised the decision. Speaking at a rally in Texas, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley — the last major Republican challenger to Trump for the party’s presidential nomination — said she thinks the ruling was “important.”
“We don’t ever want some elected official in a state — or anybody else — saying who can and can’t be on a ballot,” Haley said, even after the crowd booed her mention of the ruling. “This is America. … I’ll defeat Donald Trump fair and square, but I want him on that ballot.”
Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), one of the few Republican lawmakers who has criticized Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, said it is up to Colorado voters to “decide who they want to lead our nation.”
Buck’s sentiment was echoed on Monday. Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the ruling “confirms what Republicans have been arguing: The American people get to pick their candidates, not activists or bureaucrats.”
The Dhillon Law Group, the main firm that has defended Trump in the Colorado case, said the ruling is a “victory is not just for President but for the integrity of our electoral system and the rights of voters across the country.”
Democrats, meanwhile, have largely remained silent on the ruling. Among the first in the party to speak out on the decision was Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.), who posted the text of the 14th Amendment on social media.
“It’s clear [Donald Trump] tried to violently overturn an election,” Pascrell wrote. “The text of our Constitution may be inconvenient and unpleasant to execute, but the text is clear despite any loophole the republican supreme court carves out.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) simply shared the following comment on X: “The fate of our nation is on the ballot in November. Vote.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who served as a manager in the first impeachment against Trump, questioned whether the court will move as quickly to address the second Trump-related case in their docket.
“The Supreme Court moved rapidly to clear Donald Trump to appear on the ballot. Will it move just as quickly to reject his false claims of immunity so he can appear in court? Or will justice delayed again be justice denied?” he posted on X.
Speaking to CNN, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said the Supreme Court “punted” by asking Congress to act and that, while he disagrees with the justices’ interpretation of the 14th Amendment, he noted that he’s working with a number of his Democratic colleagues, including Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) and Eric Swalwell (Calif.) to revive legislation that would help determine that “someone who committed insurrection is disqualified’ by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
“Obviously, the Supreme Court did not want to step up to the plate and deal with the clear textualist meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,” Raskin said. “Much less did they want to deal with the original purposes of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was to keep out of federal office people who have already proven themselves disloyal and untrustworthy.”
Azi Paybarah, Patrick Svitek and Amy B Wang contributed to this report