Trump Expresses Regret Over Supreme Court Nominations
In a recent interview, former President Donald Trump shared his feelings of regret regarding the nominations of the three Supreme Court justices he appointed during his first term. He indicated that Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett have voted against him more frequently than he would have liked since joining the court.
When asked directly about his regrets, Trump reflected on the influence he had in appointing each justice, saying, “Yeah. Yeah. What can I do? I put them in. They voted against me too often. I was very—I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often. They vote for me too.”
His disappointment seems to stem from specific court decisions, particularly those related to birthright citizenship and his emergency tariffs. Commenting on a ruling regarding citizenship, Trump expressed, “It’s unfortunate what they did—not to me, to our country. And it’s become a corrupt business, all because of the Supreme Court decision.”
This ruling, made in June, deemed Trump’s order to limit birthright citizenship unlawful, with Barrett and Kavanaugh siding with the majority while Gorsuch dissented.
Trump also criticized the justices for a February decision that overturned his global tariffs, arguing that a simple clause could have saved the government a significant sum of money. “All they had to do was a little clause saying any money paid does not have to be paid back…would have saved $400 billion,” he lamented. “They chose not to save that.”
Interestingly, Trump praised the Democratic appointees on the court for their unity, expressively noting his admiration for their loyalty. However, when pressed about whether he expected the same loyalty from his own appointees, he seemed to backtrack slightly: “I do like loyalty, yeah,” he acknowledged, but quickly added, “No, I don’t want loyalty. I want good decisions.”
These comments follow Trump’s recent criticism of the same justices after a September ruling that prevented a Postal Service directive from limiting mail-in ballots ahead of the midterms, which he labeled as “another bad decision” from a court he felt had been “bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left.”
Reflecting on his disappointment, he stated at that time, “These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court; they are merely a shell of their original selves,” sharing his thoughts on Truth Social.
