2024 presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy vowed on Tuesday to withdraw his name from Colorado’s upcoming Republican primary, and called on his fellow candidates to do the same.
The biotechnology entrepreneur and devout culture warrior’s decision comes in response to the state Supreme Court’s ruling just hours before that former President Donald Trump is ineligible to run for president under the 14th Amendment because he “engaged in insurrection” by inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
“I pledge to *withdraw* from the Colorado GOP primary unless Trump is also allowed to be on the state’s ballot, and I demand that Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Nikki Haley to do the same immediately—or else they are tacitly endorsing this illegal maneuver which will have disastrous consequences for our country,” he wrote in a lengthy post on X.
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Ramaswamy argued—much like the lower court decision that Colorado’s Supreme Court overrode Tuesday—that the 14th Amendment did not intend for the presidency to fall under its definition of an “officer of the United States.” The Centennial State’s high court disagreed with that argument, writing that the president is indeed an officer under “the most obvious and sensible reading” of the Constitution.
“The Framers of the 14th Amendment would be appalled to see this narrow provision—intended to bar former U.S. officials who switched to the Confederacy from seeking public office—being weaponized by a sitting President and his political allies to prevent a former President from seeking reelection,” Ramaswamy continued. “Our country is becoming unrecognizable to our Founding Fathers.”
Trump is widely expected to appeal his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he stands little chance of losing—he appointed three of the nine justices, and three others are consistently conservative votes.
If the court were to rule against Trump, however, he could be barred from running for the presidency entirely.
