If you didn't watch the oral arguments in Trump v. Anderson at the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday, it was really something.
Last year, left-wing groups launched a nationwide effort to exclude Trump from primary ballots, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. While most states have rejected these attempts, in December, the Colorado Supreme Court declared Trump ineligible. Maine's Secretary of State eventually followed suit.
However, experts from both sides of the aisle predicted that if the Supreme Court took up the case, it would likely lead to a unanimous overturning of the rulings against Trump.
Will that happen? Even justices from the leftist wing of the court appeared skeptical of the decision to remove Trump from the ballot — even Joe Biden's nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson.
"The argument is now over. The disqualification advocates may have expected a cold reception, but this was perfectly glacial. Notably, some of the toughest and most skeptical questions came from the left of the Court," George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley said in a post on X/Twitter. "Most notable were the questions from Justice Jackson who seemed to push the idea that the president may not have been intended to be one of those covered by the provision."
There were quite a few concerns that justices posed that others echoed as well. For example, Chief Justice John Roberts warned that when one state unilaterally decides that a candidate is ineligible, other states may respond with retaliatory action.
“I would expect that a good number of states will say ‘Whoever the Democratic candidate is, you’re off the ballot,’” Roberts predicted. Indeed, after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Trump ineligible to be on the state ballot, Republicans in various states responded by promising efforts to boot Joe Biden from their own state ballots.
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“Seeing what happened in Colorado makes me think—except we believe in democracy in Texas — maybe we should take Joe Biden off the ballot in Texas for allowing 8 million people to cross the border since he’s been president, disrupting our state far more than anything anyone else has done in recent history,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said in December.
Does that mean the Supreme Court will vote unanimously in Trump's favor? Not yet, but right now, it's looking very good that at least eight of the court's nine members will — with the one potential holdout being Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
"Many of us thought Jackson would be the toughest sell for Roberts," Jonathan Turley told Fox News. "It appears maybe Sotomayor may be the tougher sell."
"If you were to take a bet, you would say eight of the justices seemed to be prepared to rule against Colorado," he predicted. "Sotomayor is the outlier in terms of the issues. It's clear again they are not looking at arguing whether this was an insurrection, even though some of the justices were concerned about the lack of due process afforded to the president."
Liberal media outlets all appeared to agree that the court is going to rule in favor of Trump.
"The Supreme Court is not going to let Colorado, or any other state, remove Donald Trump from the ballot in 2024," lamented the liberal rag Slate. "This goose is cooked."
Indeed, that's exactly what it looks like.
