Former top Obama adviser David Axelrod warned Friday that a court decision removing former President Donald Trump from the primary ballot \u2018would rip the country apart.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018I have very, very strong reservations about all of this,\u2019 Axelrod said on CNN on Friday. \u2018I do think it would rip the country apart if he were actually prevented from running because tens of millions of people want to vote for him.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Axelrod said that the Democrats\u2019 best bet on beating Trump is in the polls.<\/p>\n
\u2018I think if you\u2019re going to beat Donald Trump, you\u2019re going to probably have to do it at the polls,\u2019 he continued.<\/p>\n
The former political advisor argued that Maine\u2019s decision to remove the Republican frontrunner from the state\u2019s primary ballot plays into Trump\u2019s narrative that the Democratic Party is only \u2018coming after him\u2019 because of his presidential bid.<\/p>\n
\u2018A lot of the motivation for [Trump\u2019s] candidacy was as a legal defense strategy,\u2019 Axelrod said. \u2018He wanted to set up a construct \u2026 which says that they\u2019re coming after him because he\u2019s running for president, and they\u2019re trying to prevent him from being president.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Axelrod said that the effort by the left to remove Trump has backfired, and he has only \u2018gained\u2019 popularity since his many indictments.<\/p>\n
\u2018We\u2019ve run this experiment, he\u2019s only gained since he started getting indicted,\u2019 he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018What you thought might be kryptonite for him has turned out to be battery packs, and this is a big one for him,\u2019 Axelrod said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court earlier this month booted Trump from the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Colorado\u2019s secretary of state then announced she would keep Trump on the ballot pending the state GOP\u2019s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Colorado is a Democratic-leaning state that is not expected to be competitive for Republicans in November.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Dec. 28, Maine\u2019s Secretary of State Shenna Bellows disqualified former President Trump from the state\u2019s presidential primary ballot.<\/p>\n
Bellows also cited Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which bans from office those who \u2018engaged in insurrection.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to make a final decision on Trump\u2019s eligibility.<\/p>\n
Fox News\u2019 Bradford Betz contributed to this report.<\/p>\n\n
Former top Obama adviser David Axelrod warned Friday that a court decision removing former President Donald Trump from the primary ballot \u2018would rip the country apart.\u2019 \u2018I have very, very strong reservations about all of this,\u2019 Axelrod said on CNN on Friday. \u2018I do think it would rip the country apart if he were actually <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13449,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13448","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}