In his sprawling new interview with TIME, President Donald Trump finally said the quiet part out loud with respect to his Supreme Court justice picks -- Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett -- flat-out admitting that he regrets all three of them because they "voted against me too often."
Trump's entire second presidential term has been inundated with one Supreme Court defeat after another, despite his best efforts to stack the highest Court in the land with his own devout loyalists. In February, the SCOTUS ruled 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not, in fact, give him the authority to implement his sweeping emergency tariffs. Kavanaugh dissented, while Gorsuch and Barrett joined the controlling opinion.
Just a few short months later, Trump was hammered again when the Supreme Court rejected his attempt to impose severe restrictions on birthright citizenship. Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts joined the liberal-leaning justices in striking down Trump's attempt as unconstitutional. Kavanaugh joined a separate majority that concluded the restrictions violated federal law. Gorsuch dissented.
Just one day before that loss, the Supreme Court blocked his efforts to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook in a 5-4 decision.
When asked point-blank in the TIME interview whether he regretted his SCOTUS choices, Trump did not mince his words.
"Yeah. Yeah. What can I do? I put them in. They voted against me too often," the president answered. "I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often. They vote for me too."
He went on to openly whine that the SCOTUS' three Democratic-appointed justices are more loyal to their respective appointers and party than his are to him.
The Democrats stick like glue — those three, they virtually never vary. 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.
They have loyalty to Barack Hussein Obama. They have loyalty to [Joe] Biden, even though Biden doesn’t even know who the hell they are. He wouldn’t know. He doesn’t even know what the Supreme Court is. And me, I gave them the chance of a lifetime, and it’s unfortunate what they did.
The president specifically raged against the Court's decisions regarding tariffs and citizenship, referring to the birthright decision as "disastrous for the country."
"It’s unfortunate what they did — not to me, to our country. Birthright citizenship. It’s becoming a major industry now. People are making millions and millions of dollars, and we’re losing trillions of dollars. And it’s become a corrupt business, all because of the Supreme Court decision," he said.
"That decision was for the babies of slaves. Look at where it was —look at where it was approved. It wasn’t for Chinese people, wealthy or unwealthy, coming, you know, pouring into our country. And this tariff decision again, 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. They chose not to save that."
When asked in the interview if loyalty was something he specifically wanted from his own SCOTUS nominees, he first responded, "I do like loyalty, yeah."
But when further pressed as to whether he expected loyalty from the justices he appointed, the president answered, "No, I don't want loyalty. I want good decisions."
Of course, in Trump's mind, "good decisions" are decisions that agree with and are loyal to him.
"The tariff decision was disastrous for the country. I want good decisions for the country," he continued to rage. "They’ve treated me – look, I put these people in. It is what it is. Very disappointing, very disappointing for the country – their decisions. And the country knows it. Very disappointing for the country. The other ones – they stick like glue. It’s unbelievable, right?”
At this point, put this man's picture in the dictionary, right next to "malignant narcissist."
