Donald Trump’s tantrum in February after the Supreme Court rejected his tariffs policy was extreme, even by his standards. The president not only condemned the six-member majority as “a disgrace to our nation,” but he also insisted that the justices who dared to rule in a way he didn’t like are “very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.”
Asked whether he regretted nominating Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, Trump didn’t answer the question directly, though he said he considers their role in the ruling “an embarrassment to their families.”
For a Republican who told voters that judicial criticism ought to be illegal, the hysterics were a bit much.
This was not, however, a one-day fit. In the weeks and months that followed, the president kept going, rage-tweeting against the high court in mid-March. And again in early April. And some more in late April, including comments that “certain” conservative justices on the court have “gone weak, stupid, and bad.”
On Mother’s Day, Trump broke new ground, publishing a 544-word screed to his social media platform in which he said Gorsuch and Barrett, two of his three appointees, “have hurt our Country so badly!” He added:
I’m working so hard to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, and then people that I appointed have shown so little respect to our Country, and its people. What is the reason for this? They have to do the right thing, but it’s really OK for them to be loyal to the person that appointed them to “almost” the highest position in the land, that is, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
“I don’t want loyalty, but I do want and expect it for our Country,” Trump said, seemingly indifferent to the contradiction between the first half of the sentence and the second.
The president’s tirade concluded, again in reference to Barrett and Gorsuch. “Well, maybe Neil, and Amy, just had a really bad day [in the tariffs ruling], but our Country can only handle so many decisions of that magnitude before it breaks down, and cracks!!! Sometimes decisions have to be allowed to use Good, Strong, Common Sense as a guide.”
In context, there was no great mystery as to what Trump was asking the court to do: He apparently still hopes to convince Republican-appointed justices to rule his way on birthright citizenship.
At this point, we could talk about the impropriety of such a harangue. We could highlight every individual error of fact and judgment. We could even talk about how pitiful Trump appeared in this lengthy, poorly written whine.
But while those elements are important, two other angles are worth keeping in mind.
The first is that Trump still doesn’t understand how the government works. He seems utterly baffled by the idea that he could appoint Supreme Court justices who, in turn, sometimes rule in ways he doesn’t like. In other words, the president keeps publicly complaining, not about justices being corrupt, but about justices not being corrupt enough to make him happy.
The second is that Trump is doing exactly what he did earlier this year ahead of the tariffs ruling: He’s lobbying sitting justices the only way he knows how, by whining incessantly on social media, hoping to sway them with unsubtle begging (“it’s really OK for them to be loyal to the person that appointed them”).
In January, the focus of his pathetic appeal was tariffs; now, it’s birthright citizenship.
None of this worked out for him with the former. If he’s expecting a different result in the latter, he probably ought to lower his expectations.
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