Former President Trump on Monday took a victory lap after the Supreme Court restored him to the ballot in Colorado, rebuffing 14th Amendment challenges to his candidacy for the White House.
But Trump’s attention quickly shifted to a more pressing Supreme Court case in his eyes: one concerning whether he can be criminally prosecuted for his efforts to overturn his 2020 reelection loss.
“I have great respect for the Supreme Court, and I want to just thank them for working so quickly and so diligently and so brilliantly and, again, this is a unifying factor,” Trump said in remarks from his Mar-a-Lago estate.
“I hope that the justices, because they’ll be working on some other cases, but one in particular, presidents have to be given totally immunity,” he added. “They have to be allowed to do their job. If they’re not allowed to do their job, it’s not what the founders wanted, but perhaps even more importantly it will be terrible for the country.”
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that Colorado cannot disqualify Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection ban, effectively ending the long-shot effort.
Trump spent relatively little time in his Mar-a-Lago remarks discussing the Colorado decision that was announced Monday morning, and comparatively spoke at length about the need for presidents to be granted full immunity.
“If a president doesn’t have full immunity, you really don’t have a president,” Trump said, suggesting whoever is in the White House would not have “the courage” to make difficult decisions.
“They have to make decisions, and they have to make them free of all terror that can be reigned upon them when they leave office,” Trump added.
The Supreme Court last week agreed to take up the issue of whether Trump is immune from prosecution in the case regarding his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.
The high court’s order establishes an expedited schedule, setting up oral arguments during the week of April 22 and likely enabling the landmark decision to be handed down by the end of June or sooner.
If the conservative-majority court ultimately sides against Trump, as many legal observers expect, it would then allow special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution to move forward, providing the judge in the case with a window to still schedule the trial before November’s election.
Trump is facing 91 felony charges across four different cases. There is the Washington, D.C., case, a separate case in Georgia concerning his efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results, a New York City case over an alleged hush money scheme during the 2016 campaign and a Florida case over his retention of classified materials after leaving the White House.
“If a president does a good job, a president should be free and clear and, frankly, celebrated for having done a good job,” Trump said Monday. “Not indicted four times and not gone after on a civil basis and not demanded to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.”
The Biden campaign called Trump’s remarks from Mar-a-Lago “chaotic musings” that “remind the American people why they voted him out of office four years ago.”
“While Trump rants and raves from his country club, President Biden is focused on what actually matters – delivering results for the American people, from lowering prescription drug costs to capping insulin prices and building an economy that works for the middle class,” Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement.
Updated at 3:46 p.m.