Trump 'upset' at his own Supreme Court picks as he loses big and lashes out

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy attend U.S. President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol

Although the United States has its most right-wing Supreme Court in generations, President Donald Trump often lashes out at the justices — including the ones he appointed. And libertarian journalist Damon Root, in Reason, examines Trump's ongoing frustration with a High Court where GOP appointees comprise a 6-3 supermajority.

"Trump is upset for a simple reason: While the conservative legal movement has been winning big at the Court, Trump's own record is rather more mixed," Root explains in Reason. "In fact, on three key issues that clearly matter a great deal to him because he keeps bringing them up — tariffs, birthright citizenship, and voting by mail — one or more of his own appointees has ruled against him every time."

Although Democrats have won the popular vote in most of the United States' post-1980s presidential elections, Republicans have had much better luck with the High Court. Former President Barack Obama appointed two justices during his eight years in office (Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan), while Trump appointed three during his first term alone: Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch. Two-thirds of the Court consists of GOP appointees, and half of those six conservative justices are Trump appointees.

On his Truth Social platform, Trump recently accused the conservative-dominated Supreme Court of being "bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left."

"President Donald Trump dramatically reshaped the U.S. Supreme Court during his first term by appointing three new justices who then made possible a series of far-reaching decisions beloved by legal conservatives, including the narrowing of the reach of the Voting Rights Act and the total elimination of the constitutional right to abortion," Root observes. "But none of that means that Trump actually looks fondly upon the Court that he has so thoroughly remade."

According to Root, the justices who are the most favorable to Trump are Samuel Alito (appointed by former President George W. Bush) and Clarence Thomas (appointed by President George H.W. Bush). The younger Bush also appointed conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, who Trump often rails against.

"What explains why Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have turned out to be more reliable votes for Trump than Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett, each of whom the president himself put on the high bench?" Root argues. "The short answer is that Thomas and Alito are basically the biggest supporters of executive power on the current Court. In the tariffs case, for example, the question was whether Trump was authorized to wield a type of authority that the Constitution specifically assigned to Congress. On birthright citizenship, the question was whether an executive order could supersede the text and history of a constitutional amendment. And on voting by mail, the question was, again, whether the executive could wield power that was assigned elsewhere by the Constitution, namely, to the states and Congress."

Root continues, "In all three disputes, Thomas and Alito argued that the president was empowered to do exactly what he was trying to do, with no need to worry about the constitutional separation of powers. Trump's judicial appointees, by contrast, were unwilling to go that far three times in a row."

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