Republicans Slam Maine Secretary of State’s Decision to Disqualify Trump from Ballot as Affront to Democracy

donald trump
AP Photo/Reba Saldanha
Nick Gilbertson

Republicans ripped Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ decision Thursday to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the ballot in Maine – citing Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, or the Insurrection Clause – as an affront to Democracy.

As Breitbart News’s Hannah Bleau Knudsen noted, the decision will not take effect until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the issue. Notably, the Colorado Supreme Court issued a similar ruling that Trump’s legal team and the Colorado Republican Party are challenging in separate petitions to the U.S. Supreme Court. The order has been stayed, and Trump’s name will remain on the ballot in Colorado pending the high court’s decision on the matter.

Republicans and Trump allies were highly critical of the Bellows ruling after it came down Thursday, with many suggesting the decision is an attack on the American democratic system.

In a post on X, Donald Trump Jr. said that Bellows’s decision underscores hypocrisy among Democrats who “screech about preserving Democracy.”

“Democrats could not care less about democracy only power remember that when they show you who they are!” he wrote. Accompanying his post were two photos – one where Bellows appears with former President Barack Obama and another where she is pictured with President Joe Biden.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who has endorsed Trump for president, called the decision both “reckless and partisan” in a social media post but said he was “confident the Supreme Court will reverse it.”

One of Johnson’s predecessors, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), contended, “The war against Trump has evolved into a war by the left against the American people,” depriving them of their rights and freedoms:

Over 1, 300,000 Coloradans voted for Trump in 2020. They are now stripped of their freedom. Trump carried the northern district of Maine,. They are now denied that right. Robert F Kennedy Jr and No Labels are both having rights denied by the totalitarian left. This is an assault on American freedom not on President Trump

One of Trump’s Republican primary opponents, Vivek Ramaswamy, expressed a similar sentiment in a post on X, stating that Bellows’ ruling “is what an *actual* threat to democracy looks like.”

“The system is hellbent on taking this man out, the Constitution be damned,” he added before reaffirming his pledge to remove his name from the ballot in states where Trump’s name is ultimately nixed.

In a subsequent video, Ramaswamy argued that the ruling underscores that Democrats and the anti-Trump political establishment will never allow Trump to win back the White House.

“We’ve got to open our eyes to the fact that they’re not going to let this man get anywhere near that finish line. That’s the hard truth. We can’t fall for their trap. They’re selling us the rope today that they will use to hang us tomorrow,” he said.

Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), who served as the White House physician for both Trump and Obama, sees the move as “ELECTION INTERFERENCE,” according to his post on X.

“THEIR ONLY CHANCE AT WINNING IS RIGGING THE ELECTION! Trump will be BACK in the White House. WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he wrote.

Lou Dobbs, a legendary news anchor and host of the The Great America Show podcast, argued that if the Supreme Court fails to “stand up for the Constitution” in this case, “then we no longer have a Republic.”

Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a former strategist for Trump and host of the America First podcast, slammed Bellows as a “communist” while sharing a picture of her smiling ear-to-ear next to Obama.

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk wrote in a post on X that “[t]hese maniacs don’t care about the consequences of their actions.”

“They want to destroy a system that has worked for 230 years rather than risk losing power ever again,” he added.

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