The bogus case against Trump

 Douglas Shoen:

The decision this week by the Colorado Supreme Court (by a 4-3 vote) to remove Donald Trump from the state’s ballot is a decided loss for democracy, arguably a worse loss for Democrats, and ultimately a win for Donald Trump — for several reasons.

First and foremost, and most obviously, in the Republican primary, Trump’s argument has been that democracy has been undermined by the various investigations that he has faced and is currently facing. Now, before any of the major Trump cases — including the one related to his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, which was the reason Colorado ruled he was ineligible for the ballot — have concluded, he has been preemptively removed from one state’s ballot.

This is unprecedented in American political life, and the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision was made even more egregious on Friday, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided to sidestep political questions related to Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 — which Colorado should have done. But more importantly, Colorado’s decision sends a message confirming the worldview of Donald Trump: that he has been subjected to an ongoing witch hunt.

Forget what truth — or lack thereof — there may be in that assertion, the fact of the matter is that looking back, prior allegations of Russian collusion did not exclude or prove what people thought it would about Trump’s victory in 2016, nor were they sufficient to disqualify Trump from any state’s ballot in that election.

As of this writing, there have been no legal findings of culpability against Trump, and despite the presumption of innocence that exists in our legal system, a court has made a decision that appears overwhelmingly partisan and would suggest that because of various charges against Trump — and because of his behavior on January 6 — he should be not allowed to take office or campaign for the presidency of the United States.

A decision like this confirms the worst claims of Trump and his MAGA supporters. And now, the 2024 election — even more than it has been already — becomes about Trump and how “liberal elites” judge and gang up on him, rather than on his fitness to be president, which ought to be the key question.
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For some Democrats, Trump derangement syndrome is an incurable disease.  From the Russian collusion hoax to this latest nonsense they are determined to thwart democracy when it comes to Trump.  What is so absurd about this syndrome is that Trump was a much more effective president than Joe Biden.  He kept inflation under control and Europe and the Middle East were not on fire with war.  Trump was able to do this despite the misguided efforts of Democrats to remove him from office.  

This latest effort is based on the false narrative that a small riot on January 6 was an "insurrection."  That is a totally baseless conclusion and one that was used to attack Trump even though Trump told the crowd to peacefully demonstrate their position.  There is zero evidence that Trump ever told that crowd to overthrow the government.  The insurrection narrative is more evidence of the Democrats' politics of fraud.