To Trump, America’s judges are either minions or traitors

Trump has never respected the federal courts’ constitutional role as a check on presidential lawbreaking and abuse of power. When judges or Supreme Court justices do their job, upholding the law and Constitution in ways that interfere with Trump doing whatever he wants, the president and his henchmen go on the attack.  

Trump and Trump officials have denounced judges who rule against him as “rogue,” “corrupt,” “deranged,” “Radical Left Lunatic,” “monsters” who are carrying out an “insurrection” against the president. Trump has lashed out against “USA hating judges who suffer from an ideology that is sick, and very dangerous for our country.” 

Keep in mind that our current Supreme Court majority, with three justices nominated by Trump in his first term, has gone out of its way to give him the benefit of the doubt. They fulfilled his campaign promise to create a court that would overturn Roe v. Wade. They have misused the court’s “shadow docket” to overturn lower court rulings and allow destructive and legally dubious policies to wreak havoc. They have bent the law on his behalf with legal double standards. They even wove out of thin air a cloak of immunity for him when he breaks it.  

And yet all that is not enough for a president who demands 100 percent loyalty from his underlings and expects the same from “his” judges.  

Last year when Trump-nominated Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not rule as the administration wanted, MAGA judicial activists denounced her viciously, saying she had “her head up her ass” and calling her “an ungrateful, backstabbing POS.”........

© The Hill