Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., an independent presidential candidate for 2024, criticized the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that disqualified former President Donald Trump from running for office again, saying it would undermine democracy and make the country ungovernable.
The Colorado Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision on Tuesday, ruled that Trump was ineligible for the presidency under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause, which bars anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the government from holding office.
The court based its decision on Trump’s role in inciting the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, which aimed to overturn the results of the 2020 election that he lost to President Joe Biden.
Kennedy, who launched his 2024 campaign as a Democrat in April before switching to an independent bid in October, said the court’s ruling was a “judicial fiat” that deprived the voters of their right to choose their leader.
“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 wrote on X, a social media platform.
“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.”
Kennedy called for a swift reversal of the court’s decision, saying it “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.”
Kennedy also compared the court’s decision to the practices of authoritarian regimes that suppress opposition candidates.
“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!”
Kennedy, who is the son of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, is running on a platform of environmental justice, health freedom, and electoral reform.
He has faced censorship and opposition from both the Democratic and Republican parties, according to Mark Gorton and Tony Lyons, co-founders of Americas Voice 2024, a super PAC supporting Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign.
Kennedy faces resistance from both parties
They told Fox News Digital that the Colorado court’s decision was similar to the tactics that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) used against Kennedy when he was campaigning in New Hampshire, and that they were planning to penalize him in Georgia and South Carolina.
“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 Republican National Committee (RNC) 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.”
A recent poll by Americas Voice 2024 showed that Kennedy was leading both Trump and Biden among young Americans in swing states, with 36% of the vote, compared to 28% for Trump and 24% for Biden.
