It’s official. Donald Trump will appear on the presidential ballot in Mississippi, barring an unforeseen act by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Officials with the state’s Team Trump campaign alongside Governor Tate Reeves, Congressman Michael Guest, and Mississippi GOP chairman Frank Bordeaux gathered on Tuesday in front of a crowd in Jackson to announce that voters will have the chance to cast a ballot for the embattled former president in his efforts to reclaim the Oval Office.
“Today represents all of us coming together to take a major step forward in our effort to make America great again,” Reeves told an audience of campaign volunteers for Trump at the Mississippi GOP headquarters.
The move to publicly certify Trump follows rulings by the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine’s Democratic secretary of state to cite the 14th Amendment as a reason to delegitimize the former commander-in-chief as a presidential candidate and remove him as a choice for voters in the Republican primary.
Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled that Trump violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bans insurrectionists from holding office. This was ruled in connection to his alleged role in the January 6, 2021 incident in which Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in protest of the 2020 presidential election results.
Though Trump has not been found guilty of inciting an insurrection, Maine’s elections regulator, Shenna Bellows, found that Trump had been responsible for stirring up the protestors who were reportedly seeking to overthrow the government on his behalf.
Reeves, on the other hand, argues that two states are looking to stifle the will of the people out of fear that a candidate they do not agree with politically has a legitimate chance to hold the office of the president once more.
“What today represents in Mississippi is that we believe in letting the people decide elections,” Reeves said. “What’s happening in Colorado and Maine is not only ridiculous, [but] it’s un-American. It’s un-American to try to kick someone off the ballot … We should take a step back and say, ‘Why are they trying to keep President Trump off the ballot?’ And the answer is simple — they know they can’t beat him at the ballot box.”
Guest, who voted to create a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection, told the audience that America is a nation in decline due to inflation and an open Southern U.S. border that has progressively gotten worse under President Joe Biden.
He asserted that Trump is the leader the nation needs to undo the damage done by the current administration and steer the country to a better path that promotes prosperity for its citizens.
“America is yearning for a new leader — a leader who shares our conservative values, a leader who believes in limited government, who believes in peace through strength, who believes in lower taxation, who believes in protecting the right to life, and a leader who believes in securing our borders,” Guest said. “We have such a leader and that leader is President Donald J. Trump.”
As of now, the decisions in both Colorado and Maine have been put on hold as the former president’s legal team prepares to appeal the rulings, setting up the high court to weigh in on whether Trump can or cannot hold office as the primaries near.
Primary elections in Mississippi are scheduled for Tuesday, March 12 with the general election set to take place on Tuesday, November 5.
