MSNBC Legal Analyst Stunned By How Badly Supreme Court Hearing Went For Trump Challengers: ‘Adjectives That I Won’t Say On Air’
Former U.S. Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal joined MSNBC on Thursday to discuss the Supreme Court hearing on the case to remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot in Colorado and was duly unimpressed by the arguments for the ban.
“How did you see it and what were the some of the parts that struck out the most to you?” Katyal was asked on MSNBC, where he is a legal analyst.
“So, you know, I’ve watched over 400 Supreme Court arguments. I’ve done 50 myself. I would tell you this argument did not go well for the Trump challengers, and that’s to put it mildly, I probably have some other adjectives that I won’t, say on air,” Katyal replied, adding:
You know, in the thing that I was watching for was any indication anywhere about just how dangerous a ruling to overturn the Colorado Supreme Court was. We heard a lot from the court, particularly the chief justice, Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Alito, about how if you affirm the Colorado decision, it will empower states to mess with federal elections. And to be sure, that’s a risk. But what you never heard the Trump challengers really get at was the risk on the other side that this is a canonical part of our Constitution, forged after the Civil War, one of the most difficult times in our nation’s history. And yet we came together and said insurrectionists can’t be on the ballot. Not just about the Civil War, but going forward for all sorts of reasons. There was no discussion of that, really.
Basically, you know, they allowed Donald Trump to read the 14th Amendment like a tax code, looking for a loophole here and a loophole there. And, you know, unfortunately, the stakes on the other side were not presented to the court today. And so I saw only one justice, really, Justice Sotomayor, who was really listening to what the Colorado challengers were saying. And it wouldn’t shock me if even she when push came to shove and she reads the transcript of this argument may come the other way. Now, you know, the justices could go back. They could read all the front-of-the-court briefs, which make a lot of these points and come up with the other side.
“But, you know, presumably they read those briefs before the argument today and they got no help, to use Justice Alito’s word, ‘no help,’ from the challengers to Trump today in the oral argument,” he concluded.
Watch the clip above via MSNBC.
