In a rare showing of unanimity, the Supreme Court sided with former President Donald Trump in his quest to stay on the 2024 ballot.
All nine justices ruled in favor of Trump, who had challenged Colorado’s attempt to remove him from the state’s primary ballot. The decision did not sit well with many on the left who has seen this as an opportunity to sideline the GOP frontrunner.
On Monday’s show, Megyn was joined by Stu Burguiere, host of BlazeTV’s Stu Does America, and Dave Marcus, columnist for The Daily Mail and Fox News, to discuss the importance of the Supreme Court’s ruling and the hysterical reaction to it.
The 9-0 Decision
Last month, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the debate over whether Trump violated the “insurrectionist clause” found in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment with his actions leading up January 6, 2021. The clause, which was adopted after the Civil War, bars those who once held government positions and subsequently “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office again.
The decision came one day before the Colorado primary on Super Tuesday and reversed the Colorado Supreme Court decision that said Trump could not serve again as president due to the 14th Amendment. The court said Colorado wrongly assumed states can determine the eligibility of candidates for federal office.
While the court was unanimous on the idea that Trump could not be unilaterally removed from the ballot, justices were divided over the broadness of the decision. A five-justice majority made up of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh wrote that states cannot remove federal office-seekers from the ballot without legislation from Congress.
In a concurring opinion, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson disagreed with the scope of the majority, as did Justice Amy Coney Barrett in her own solo writing.
In a statement, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold acknowledged that the court ruled “that states do not have the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for federal candidates. In accordance with this decision, Donald Trump is an eligible candidate on Colorado’s 2024 Presidential Primary.”
But during an appearance on MSNBC, Griswold expressed “disappointment” with the decision because she believes “that states should be able, under our Constitution, to bar oath-breaking insurrectionists.” The ruling will impact similar challenges that had been filed in over 30 states to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot.
The Media Fallout
It did not take long for reaction to pour in. “The left, of course, is accusing Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Brown Jackson of betraying democracy,” Megyn noted. “Or maybe they just exercised normal jurisprudence. Maybe they actually saw the issue very clearly – as most normal lawyers did – right from the start.”
Keith Olbermann took to X to declare the high court “betrayed democracy” and called out the liberal-leaning justices by name. He once again called for the Supreme Court to be “dissolved” because it is “corrupt and illegitimate.”
Associated Press White House reporter and CNN analyst Seung Min Kim, meanwhile sought to contextualize Trump’s challenge and the court’s ruling. “Supreme Court restores Trump to ballot, rejecting state attempts to hold him accountable for attack on Capitol in 2021,” she tweeted.
Over at CNN, Dana Bash and Elie Honig admitted the justices weren’t “necessarily wrong” in their interpretation of the Constitution but argued that the American people and Congress cannot be left to their own devices.
BASH: You know, look, unfortunately for America, the court isn’t necessarily wrong, that this is the way the framers wanted it to be. They wanted Congress, the people who are closest to their constituents, to be able to make the rules and the laws. That doesn’t change the fact that because of gerrymandering in the House and all kinds of other issues, they’re not doing their job on a lot of these big issues.
HONIG: I agree it’s very unlikely, close to impossible, that Congress will take action. But this is now a fair question that Manu Raju, Melanie Zanona should be asking members of Congress. Are you willing to pass legislation that would give us rules for how this works? It could only be in the future, by the way.
Megyn found the languish laughable. “You see, the people and their representatives in Congress, they’re not doing their jobs – because of gerrymandering – of holding this insurrectionist to account,” she quipped. “And that’s really the lamentable thing here. Really, Congress should pass a law saying that he’s an insurrectionist and he’d have to be bounced off. That’s really the solution here.”
In Burguiere’s view, the unanimous decision is another example of eroding media credibility. “The way the media handled this was that half the country was convinced that this was correct, and true, and obvious and the only way this would be stopped is by the right-wing Supreme Court that is unfair and rooting on Donald Trump,” he said. “And then when you get a 9-0 ruling and real clarity that this is insane and everyone knew it was insane.”
Even so, he doesn’t expect to see any remorse from the press. “They embarrassed themselves and there will be no retribution,” Burguiere added. “We will not see some retrospective from these media organizations… Once again, the media fell flat on its face.”
While Marcus agreed that the attempts to get Trump off the ballot were “the Mona Lisa of hypocrisy,” he said the ruling restores hope. “It was always completely absurd,” he concluded. “But I think a good takeaway from this – and why it’s so important that it was 9-0 – is that, yet again, the guardrails of American democracy have held firm on both sides.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Burguiere and Marcus by tuning in to episode 737 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.