David Axelrod, who once served as Obama’s adviser, expressed apprehension on the latest strategy unfurled by the Democrats against Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
Axelrod said that removing former president Trump from the primary ballot “would rip the country apart.”
In an interview with CNN, the former adviser said, “I have very, very strong reservations about all of this.”
“I do think it would rip the country apart if he were actually prevented from running because tens of millions of people want to vote for him.”
He further said, “I think if you’re going to beat Donald Trump, you’re going to probably have to do it at the polls.”
His interview comes as Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, and a non-lawyer, decided to drop Trump in the state’s primary ballots. In her decision, Bellows accused Trump of “using a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters” and that “[the former president] was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it.”
Axelrod said Bellow’s decision, adds up to the GOP leader’s claim that all these are politically motivated and aims to derail his campaign, and could eventually rile voters.
“A lot of the motivation for [Trump’s] candidacy was as a legal defense strategy.”
“He wanted to set up a construct … which says that they’re coming after him because he’s running for president and they’re trying to prevent him from being president.”
“We’ve run this experiment, he’s only gained since he started getting indicted,” Axelrod added.
“What you thought might be kryptonite for him has turned out to be battery packs, and this is a big one for him.”
Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, swiftly responded to Bellow’s decision and said that they would appeal it to the state court.
In a statement, Trump’s team slammed Maine’s secretary of state and said, “[Bellows] is a virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden.”
“We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter,” Cheung said. “Make no mistake, these partisan election interference efforts are a hostile assault on American democracy.”
“We will quickly file a legal objection in state court to prevent this atrocious decision in Maine from taking effect,” he added.
