Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who is running as an independent for president in 2024, issued a warning after Colorado’s Supreme Court blocked former President Donald Trump from the ballot because of his involvement in the attack on the Capitol in January 2021.
‘If Trump is kept out of office through judicial fiat rather than being defeated in a fair election, his supporters will never accept the result. This country will become ungovernable,’ Kennedy, who initially launched a Democratic primary challenge to President Biden in April before switching to an independent 2024 bid in October, wrote on X.
‘It’s time to trust the voters. It is up to the people to decide who the best candidate is. Not the courts. The people. That’s Democracy 101,’ Kennedy said. ‘When any candidate is deprived of his right to run, the American people are deprived of their right to choose.’
Calling for a swift reversal, Kennedy said the 4-3 Colorado decision deeming Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause ‘contributes to the perception that the elites are picking the President by manipulating the legal system, and through other interventions.’
‘Every American should be troubled by the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove President Trump from the ballot,’ he wrote on X. ‘The court has deprived him of a consequential right without having been convicted of a crime. This was done without an evidentiary hearing in which he is given the basic right of confronting his accusers.’
In an earlier thread, Kennedy argued the U.S. would condemn foreign governments if they acted the way the Colorado Supreme Court has.
‘When a court in another country disqualifies an opposition candidate from running, we say, ‘That’s not a real democracy.’ Now it’s happening here,’ Kennedy said. ‘I’m not a Trump supporter (if I were, I wouldn’t be running against him!) But I want to beat him in a fair election, not because he was kicked off the ballot. Let the voters choose, not the courts!’
Speaking to Fox News Digital, Mark Gorton and Tony Lyons, co-founders of Americas Voice 2024, a super PAC supporting Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign, highlighted similarities between the Colorado Trump ruling and efforts to censor Kennedy and block the longtime Democrat from the Democratic ticket.
‘Generally, these kinds of tactics to keep somebody off the ballot are the same kinds of tactics that the DNC (Democratic National Committee) used against him when he was campaigning in New Hampshire. And they were saying that they were going to penalize him in Georgia and South Carolina,’ Lyons told Fox News Digital, describing efforts he says the DNC is taking to block third-party candidates from ballots on a state-by-state basis.
‘They’re going to do everything in their power to keep Bobby Kennedy off the ballot because they don’t want him on the stage with Joe Biden. And the RNC (Republican National Committee) doesn’t want Bobby on the stage with Donald Trump because he has better ideas, better arguments and better policies,’ Lyons said. ‘They’re using these tactics as a way to avoid dialogue and debate, to disenfranchise the American public, to, you know, take away voting rights that have been, you know, hard fought for 50 or 60 years. All of these tactics are anti-democratic tactics. And so I think that Bobby Kennedy is absolutely right to stand up for the right of even an opponent when he believes that what’s being done is not the right thing and unconstitutional.’
Noting how Kennedy is not a Trump supporter, Gorton echoed those sentiments, describing Kennedy as ‘a man of principle’ working against the ‘dirty games’ of the political establishment.
‘The DNC is not just trying to do one thing to stop one candidate. They’re throwing the kitchen sink at every, you know, every Democratic letter. And whether it’s voting or rules for how you run the primary or ballot access or censoring people, it’s the same, you know, large-scale organization or large-scale network of people that instead of putting forth a candidate and letting the people choose, are constantly trying to corrupt and manipulate the system,’ Gorton told Fox News Digital. ‘The DNC — it’s amazing because they run around and are constantly talking about threats to democracy. Yet they’re the ones who are saying the American people shouldn’t get a choice, and they’re manipulating the system, and they’re censoring people. And that’s the ethic of the people in D.C. today, where they feel like they’re entitled to rule and that anything they do in the service of their own power is acceptable.’