December 21, 2023 12:30 PM UTC

Boebert Stokes MAGA Rage While Threats Against Colorado Justices Spike

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• by: Colorado Pols

In the 36 hours since the Colorado Supreme Court announced their ruling disqualifying ex-President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot in this state under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of individuals who engaged in insurrection from running for elected office, there’s been an explosion of anger and threats on social media such as Trump’s own TruthSocial and Elon Musk’s defiltered Twitter/X, much of it directed at Colorado’s 7 Supreme Court Justices–with seemingly no distinction between judges who voted yes vs. no. CBS News reports:

After ruling Tuesday that former President Donald Trump is barred from the Colorado primary ballot because he is disqualified from becoming president again on 14th Amendment grounds, Colorado Supreme Court justices are facing violent threats across both mainstream and fringe social media platforms, according to a report obtained by CBS News. The Colorado justices ruled the U.S. Constitution bars Trump from retaking the Oval Office due to his conduct surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Posts have included calls for the justices and Trump opponents to be killed by gunfire, hanging or bombs, while others are encouraging followers to stock up on weapons and ammunition and urging a civil war against Democrats. Many users have been responding directly to Trump’s posts on his social media platform, Truth Social, with the same violent rhetoric and calls to arms.

“What do you call 7 justices from the Colorado Supreme Court on the bottom of the ocean?” one user wrote. “A good start.”

NBC News:

Daniel J. Jones, the president Advance Democracy, the group that compiled the report, said the consistency of the violent threats and rhetoric was especially concerning.

“We are seeing significant violent language and threats being made against the Colorado justices and others perceived to be behind yesterday’s Colorado Supreme Court ruling,” Jones, a former FBI investigator and staffer for the Senate Intelligence Committee, told NBC News in a statement.

“The normalization of this type of violent rhetoric — and lack of remedial action by social media entities — is cause for significant concern,” he said. “Trump’s statements, which have sought to delegitimize and politicize the actions of the courts, is serving as a key driver of the violent rhetoric. Political leaders on both sides of the political aisle need to speak out against these calls for violence, [Pols emphasis] and social media platforms need to reassess their role in hosting and promoting this rhetoric.”

The decision by a 4-3 majority of Colorado Supreme Court Justices disqualifying Trump from the 2024 ballot in Colorado has provoked a disproportionate degree of bitter anger from the right, with conservative pundits and Republicans including Trump’s allies and opponents slamming the ruling as an “assault on democracy.” This decision has put the court in direct conflict with the false narrative held by these same Trump supporters that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump, therefore justifying in their final analysis any action to keep Trump in office including the violence of January 6th. The stinging rebuke of this ruling against the “Big Lie” still believed to this day by a majority of Republicans despite the lack of any supporting evidence is what’s behind the intense backlash more than a fear that Trump might actually be tossed off the ballot, with Trump’s 6-3 conservative U.S. Supreme Court still to have its say.

It will come as no surprise that one of the loudest voices warning of doom for democracy if this decision is allowed to stand is the member of Congress from Colorado whose career began with likening January 6th to 1776, Rep. Lauren Boebert:

That’s Boebert telling her 3.1 million followers on Twitter that if the Colorado Supreme Court gets its way, “our country as we know it is over.” That reads very closely to Trump telling his supporters on the morning of January 6th that if they didn’t “fight like hell,” they wouldn’t “have a country anymore.” What happened after that, as we all know, was the insurrection that Boebert herself heralded inside the building addressing the House just moments before the January 6th mob stormed the U.S. Capitol.

That is how Donald Trump put himself on the wrong side of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as determined by the Colorado Supreme Court. None of this destroys “any semblance of a free and fair election,” in fact it’s the polar opposite. The 14th Amendment exists to protect American democracy from those who have already tried once to overthrow it.

These threats of violence and national destruction are made today, at least in most cases we hope, with the assumption that the Trump-stacked U.S. Supreme Court will render them unnecessary to carry out. If the high court throws a not-impossible curveball and upholds the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court, Boebert and her vengeful followers would theoretically have higher-level targets for her rage. But until then, the stage is set for Colorado Justices to face the full misguided wrath of the MAGA right–as Boebert refers to it, “a massive wake up call.”

As surely as Trump bears responsibility for January 6th, Boebert will share responsibility for any criminal retaliation that might take place over this ruling. We of course hope that doesn’t happen, and if Boebert has any sense about her, so does she.