President Donald Trump has lashed out at the conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court in a wild rant ahead of another potentially humiliating legal defeat.
Speaking to CNBC on Tuesday, the president embarked on an angry tirade against the court—including the justices “nominated by me”—accusing them of lacking “common sense” on tariffs and asking “bad questions” about his immigration policies.
The comments came weeks after Trump became the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the Supreme Court as it debated whether all children born in the United States can continue to automatically receive citizenship.
But Trump abruptly left the April 1 hearing before it was over after some of his own conservative picks did not appear convinced by his bid to upend the policy of birthright citizenship in America.
“I’m looking to make this country strong. Supreme Court could have helped us. Now they have birthright citizenship, they’ll probably rule against us,” Trump said on Tuesday during an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
“No country in the world has it. It’s horrible for our country, and I just see it, you know. I see some of these Republicans that are nominated by me asking real bad questions—and looks like maybe we’re gonna lose that one too.”
The historic hearing sparked protests outside the court, while observers inside the room included Hollywood actor Robert DeNiro, an outspoken Trump critic.
Attorney General Pam Bondi also appeared in court with Trump that day, only to be fired by the president less than 24 hours later.
But Trump nominees Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch seemed skeptical of Trump’s case, while conservative Chief Justice John Roberts had something of a mic-drop moment when the president’s lawyer, John Sauer, tried to make the point that “we’re in a new world where eight billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who’s a U.S citizen.”
“It’s a new world,” Roberts replied. “It’s the same Constitution.”
A ruling on birthright citizenship is expected in June, with the court widely tipped to go against the president, just as it did in February when it ruled 6-3 against Trump’s signature tariff policy.
As a result of that ruling, the administration now has to refund $166 billion to about 300,000 different importers, including companies such as Nike, Walmart, and Home Depot.
“If the courts had common sense, they would have done something that could have been very easy to do and made everybody happy,” Trump lamented on Tuesday.
“If they had common sense, we would not be paying back almost $200 billion in tariffs, so stupidly. In many cases, the enemy—the enemy!—is getting this money,” he added, without specifying who exactly the enemy was.
“The people that have hated the United States, we’re giving them checks for billions of dollars. It’s so sad to see. And it would be nice if the court system and the Supreme Court could have done things a little bit differently. Very sad.”
Trump nominated conservative justices Barrett, Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh in his first term, paving the way for some of the court’s most consequential modern decisions, such as the repeal of federal abortion rights.
The trio now makes up the conservative majority alongside Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas.
But last week, Trump floated the prospect of reshaping the Supreme Court again, suggesting that Alito, 76, and Thomas, 77, may consider stepping down because of their age.
Neither has shown they intend to do so, but according to Trump, “there’s a theory that if you reach a certain age,” people should retire from the bench to make way for a new appointee with similar political leanings.
“You make the case that, at a certain time, you give it up so that you can have a justice (on the same side)… so that your ideology, your policies, your everything, would be of the kind that we like,” he said last week.
