Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Wednesday he is not withdrawing from the ballot in Colorado as rival candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called for after the state barred former President Donald Trump from the 2024 GOP primary there.
When asked if he would follow the lead of pharmaceutical businessman and fellow GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who said he will withdraw from the race in Colorado, DeSantis said in an interview on Newsmax that he will still be running for the Republican nomination in Colorado next year.
“No, I think that’s just playing into the left. I think the case will get overturned by the [U.S.] Supreme Court, but I’ve qualified for all the ballots, I’m competing in all the states, and I’m going to accumulate the delegates necessary. That’s the whole name of the game in this situation, but I do anticipate that decision was political and will get reversed,” DeSantis said.
Ron DeSantis says he will not follow Vivek Ramaswamy’s lead and withdraw from the Colorado primary if Donald Trump is not on the ballot. pic.twitter.com/0EJZLj47CN
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) December 20, 2023
Ramaswamy opined in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that the Colorado ruling was an “actual” attack on American Democracy. “I pledge to withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary unless Trump is also allowed to be on the state’s ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley to do the same immediately,” he said Tuesday.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump is disqualified from the presidential election in a split decision Tuesday, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and a nebulous theory of the former president backing an insurrection against the U.S. government based on the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill protests. Trump rivals say the move will likely help him.
DeSantis speaks out about the unjust Colorado Supreme Court decision to ban Trump from the ballot: "The Left invokes 'democracy' to justify its use of power, even if it means abusing judicial power to remove a candidate from the ballot based on spurious legal grounds. SCOTUS… pic.twitter.com/sRCmGUcQ9m
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) December 20, 2023
Speaking to a voter in Urbandale, Iowa, Wednesday, DeSantis said Democrats are handing Trump a political gift by seeking to keep him off state primary ballots in Colorado and elsewhere. “They’re doing all this stuff to basically solidify support in the primary for him, get him into the general. And the whole general election is going to be all this legal stuff,” he said.
Answering a question during a caucus event at Jethro’s BBQ in Ankeny Tuesday, DeSantis said he would keep Trump out of prison if elected president. “The idea that we’re going to put an almost 80-year-old former president in prison – that’s not going to be good for this country,” he told voters.
