President Donald Trump has lashed out at his Supreme Court justices for not doing his bidding, while praising the liberals on the bench who “stick together like glue.”
In a wild interview with Time magazine published on Thursday, Trump said he regrets nominating Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, complaining that all three have voted against him too often.
“Yeah. Yeah. What can I do? I put them in,” Trump said, noting that he “gave them the position of a lifetime” and expected “loyalty” and “good decisions.”
“The Democrats stick like glue—those three, they virtually never vary,” he added, in reference to the three liberal justices who make up the court’s minority: Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor.
“You can come up with the worst thing in the world and they’ll vote as a group. And while I don’t like it, there’s something I admire about it: there’s loyalty.”
Trump’s frustration comes as the justices he appointed have joined rulings that block or limit key parts of his agenda.
They include his signature tariffs policy, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservatives Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberal justices to declare it unlawful.
A few months later, the court also delivered a brutal blow to Trump by striking down his bid to end birthright citizenship for millions of Americans.
This also came down to a 6-3 vote, with Barrett, Kavanaugh and Roberts joining the liberal justices to rule that Trump lacked the authority to override the citizenship protections guaranteed under the 14th Amendment.
“I gave them the chance of a lifetime, and it’s unfortunate what they did,” Trump told Time.
The president has also made clear he would like another Supreme Court vacancy—and another chance to shape the court.
The problem is that the two oldest conservative justices don’t appear to be cooperating.
Justice Samuel Alito, 76, is not planning to retire this year and intends to remain on the court into at least 2027, according to sources cited by ABC News.
Justice Clarence Thomas, 77, likewise is not planning to step down, according to sources close to him.
The Time interview came as the president kicks off a 32-day campaign blitz through Republican territory on Thursday, as GOP panic escalates ahead of November’s midterms.
But parts of the interview clearly didn’t please the president, who descended into a foul-mouthed tirade over the questions he was asked.
“You haven’t asked me one f---ing positive question,” he said, according to the transcript.
“All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative. Why are you devoting all this time to the White House?”
During the interview, Trump also refused to rule out a bigger military escalation against Iran after the midterms, refused to rule out invoking the Insurrection Act around the elections, and suggested the government could take stakes in AI giants including OpenAI and Anthropic.
He also claimed that “certain levels of inflation” could help pay down the nation’s $40 trillion debt, while insisting the Federal Reserve has been deliberately working against him.
