Americans are hoping the courts will spare them an electoral reckoning with Trump | Lawrence Douglas

Colorado's supreme court concluded the ex-president could not hold office. Alas, the US supreme court will likely not agree

This is how dictatorships are born." Such was Donald Trump's response to news that the Colorado supreme court had ruled that the former president is disqualified from holding office and so should be removed from the state's Republican primary ballot.

Anytime Trump speaks of dictatorships" these days we should pay attention. He has all but declared his intention to engage in dictatorial rule should he win in 2024. It isn't clear, then, whether his statement, in a fund-raising missive fired off minutes after the news broke, was meant as a condemnation of the ruling or a prediction of how he would handle such legal setbacks should he be returned to the White House.

Lawrence Douglas is the author, most recently, of Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. He is a contributing opinion writer for the Guardian US and teaches at Amherst College