The president’s latest attacks on Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett come eight days after the secretary said such personal animosity “must stop.”
SCOTUS tariff decision is a major setback for President Trump’s economic policy
Last week, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling on presidential power, shattering the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s economic policies.
WASHINGTON – Despite a recent plea by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, President Donald Trump on March 25 again attacked two justices he appointed, saying they make him “sick” and they are “bad for our country.”
President Trump singled out Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett in a speech at a fundraising dinner for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which voted against him in the landmark tariff case last month.
President Trump’s recent salvos against the two judges are part of a broader attack on the court overall, and he has called on Republicans in Congress to crack down on lawyers across the country who vote against Trump and his administration’s policies.
“The time has come for Republicans to pass a tough new crime bill that imposes tougher penalties on dangerous repeat offenders. We will crack down on corrupt judges,” President Trump said. “There are unjust judges who are criminals.”
“These are criminals. What they’re doing to our country, the decisions they’re making are damaging to our country,” Trump said. “And I can tell you, I’ve been through it and the decisions they make.”
President Trump has been furious with Gorsuch and Barrett since the Supreme Court on February 20 struck down tariffs, a centerpiece of his economic package and a major foreign policy tool, but which also raise costs for consumers and businesses.
The 6-3 ruling, which would not have been possible without the two conservative justices, was the first major ruling on Trump’s controversial and expansive view of presidential powers.
On the day of the ruling, Trump called the judges who ruled against him “stupid pet dogs” of “RINOs” (Republicans in name only).
“I am ashamed of some members of the court and absolutely ashamed of their lack of courage to do what is right for the country,” he said.
Asked specifically about Gorsuch and Barrett, Trump said, “If you want to know the truth, I think it’s embarrassing for their families.”
‘They disgust me. Because they’re bad for our country.”
In his remarks Wednesday night, President Trump seemed particularly angry about the high costs imposed by the Supreme Court’s ruling. The ruling effectively requires the administration to return about $175 billion in tariffs that a federal judge has collected without Congressional authorization.
President Trump said, “The courts in this country, bad courts, are costing us a tremendous amount of money.” “And yes, the United States Supreme Court has harmed our country.”
“All they needed was a verdict,” Trump said. “Our country, hundreds of billions of dollars, they couldn’t care less. They couldn’t care less.”
“Not that it matters, it doesn’t matter at all, but there are two people I voted for who I appointed, and I feel bad for them,” Trump said. “They disgust me, because they’re bad for our country.”
Trump later urged Republicans to pass a new crime bill to “crack down on corrupt judges and prosecutors,” emphasizing the word fraud.
“It’s dangerous, so we have to stop.”
President Trump’s remarks came eight days after Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to push back on the president’s attacks on the judiciary.
“Personal hostility is dangerous and must end,” Roberts said at an event at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston on March 17.
Roberts, who rarely speaks publicly, did not mention Trump by name. But his comments come just two days after Trump called the high court’s ruling against him and his administration “utterly incompetent and embarrassing.”
In a lengthy March 15 post on his platform Truth Social, President Trump thanked the three conservative judges who sided with him in the case.
But in a veiled reference to Gorsuch and Barrett, he said that while Democrats on the court always stick together, “Republicans don’t.”
“They openly despise the presidents who nominated them to the highest office in the land, and they go out of their way to issue sinister and unjust judgments and intentions to prove how ‘honest,’ ‘independent,’ and ‘legitimate’ they are,” Trump wrote.
