Trump says Supreme Court ballot ruling will be remembered for '200 years' and claims he now needs immunity so he can't be prosecuted for defeating ISIS and killing the 'two biggest terrorists in the world' Soleimani and al-Baghdadi

Former President Donald Trump on Monday welcomed the Supreme Court's decision to reinstate him on presidential ballots as 'well crafted,' saying that it would unify the country. 

He thanked the justices for working quickly in delivering a ruling that he said would be remembered for 200 years.

And he urged the court to deliver him immunity in the next election case that it will consider, arguing that any other decision would leave him open to prosecution for US military actions that killed senior terrorist leaders in the Middle East. 

'You cannot take somebody out of a race,' he said Monday afternoon at his Mar-a-Lago base in Florida.

'The voters can take a person out of the race very quickly. But a court shouldn't be doing that. The Supreme Court saw that.

'And I really do believe that will be a unifying factor.'

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Donald Trump can stay on the ballot in a fatal blow for the states trying to kick him off and just 24 hours before 15 states vote on Super Tuesday

Trump referenced killing two enemies of the US in defense of his claim for immunity - Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS leader (left), and General Qassem Soleimani of the Iranian Quds Force

Two and a half hours earlier, the US Supreme Court unanimously restored the former president to primary ballots, rejecting state attempts to hold the Republican former president accountable for the Capitol riot.

It is the latest in a string of court victories for the former president. 

Last week, justices said they would also take up a case looking at whether Trump can be criminally prosecuted for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.

On Monday, Trump said that removing immunity would leave him liable to prosecution for other things, such as his attacks on the ISIS terrorist group.

'I took out ISIS and I took out some very big people from the standpoint of a different part of the world ... two of the leading terrorists ... probably the two leading terrorists ever that we've ever seen in this world,' he said.

'And those are big decisions. I don't want to be prosecuted for it.'

In 2019, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder and leader of ISIS, was killed in a raid by U.S. forces. A year late Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general, was killed by an American drone strike in Iraq. 

(Osama bin Laden, who ordered the deadliest terror attacks on U.S. soil in history was killed under President Barack Obama in 2011.)

Trump said no president would be able to act with a 'free and clear mind' if the threat of prosecution was hanging over them. 

Trump addressed the cameras at Mar-a-Lago on Monday hours after the ruling

Supporters of Donald Trump clash with police at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021

Anti-Trump demonstrators protest outside the US Supreme Court before the court decided whether former US President Donald Trump is eligible to run for president in the 2024 election in Washington, DC, on February 8, 2024

The justices handed down their ruling a day before Super Tuesday, when 15 states will make their choice. 

The court ruled that states cannot use a post-Civil War constitutional provision to keep candidates from appearing on ballots. It said that power rests only with Congress.

'Big win for America,' Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. 

The ruling brings to an end efforts in Colorado, Maine and Illinois to exclude the former president from ballots using a mechanism that disqualifies 'candidates engaged in insurrection' from taking office again.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said: 'I am disappointed in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision stripping states of the authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for federal candidates. 

Members of the Supreme Court unanimously overturned a Dec. 19 decision by Colorado's top court to kick the former president off the state's Tuesday Republican primary ballot

'Colorado should be able to bar oath-breaking insurrections from our ballot.'

Colorado's Supreme Court last year ruled that Section 3 did apply to Trump, the first time a court had applied the mechanism to a presidential candidate.  

But in their 20-page ruling, the justices said only Congress could determine who was allowed to run. 

'States may not unilaterally disqualify Donald Trump from the ballot', they said in an unsigned opinion. 'The judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court is reversed.'

The case is the court's most direct intervention in a presidential election since Bush v Gore, when it effectively handed the deadlocked 2000 result to Republican candidate George W. Bush.