Few decisions a president makes establish a legacy more than a Supreme Court appointment. A justice confirmed in his early 50s can shape American law for three decades, long after the president who chose him has left the White House. That permanence is what makes a Supreme Court seat so valuable, and it's also why every president who fills one eventually runs into the same hard truth: once a justice takes the oath, the president has no control over how that justice votes.
President Donald Trump has run into that truth before. This time, he's taking it much harder.
In a new interview with Time, Trump said he regrets nominating Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, all of whom have ruled against his agenda in major cases. The reporter brought up Trump's recent claim that the three were "shells of their former selves" and different from the people he had interviewed, then asked whether he regretted picking them.
"Yeah. Yeah. What can I do? I put them in," Trump told the magazine. "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."
He then turned his attention to the court's three left-wing justices. "The Democrats stick like glue — those three, they virtually never vary," he continued. "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. So they have loyalty to Barack Hussein Obama. They have loyalty to Biden, even though Biden doesn't even know who the hell they are."
Two rulings this year explain most of his frustration. In February, the court ruled 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not give the president authority to impose tariffs, with Gorsuch and Barrett joining the majority. In June, the justices struck down his executive order limiting birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children whose parents are in the country illegally or on temporary visas.
"It's unfortunate what they did — not to me, to our country," Trump said. "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."
"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," he added. "They chose not to save that."
When the reporter picked up on his use of the word loyalty and asked whether that's what he wants from his appointees, Trump answered, "I do like loyalty, yeah." Asked a second time about his justices specifically, he gave a different answer. "No, I don't want loyalty. I want good decisions," he said. "The tariff decision was disastrous for the country. I want good decisions for the country."
Recommended: Platner’s Replacement Nukes His Campaign With Disgusting Holocaust Remark
Trump has voiced frustration with these justices before, but he always stopped short of regret. In June 2021, he listed his three Supreme Court picks as an accomplishment during an interview with David Brody of Real America's Voice. Brody followed up by asking about California v. Texas, in which Barrett and Kavanaugh joined the majority that left Obamacare standing because the states challenging the law lacked standing to sue.
"Disappointed and that's the way it goes. I'm very disappointed," Trump said at the time. "I fought very hard for them. But I was very disappointed with a number of their rulings."
"Does it make you second guess some of those picks? Or time will tell?" Brody asked.
"No," Trump replied. "Second-guessing does no good, but I was disappointed with a number of rulings that they made."
I was glad to hear back then that Trump wasn't second-guessing his picks. Was his disappointment understandable? Sure. But this is how things go with Supreme Court justices, and it's wrong for any president to assume that putting someone on the court means that justice will rule his way every time.
Disappointment is bound to happen, and both sides experience it. Conservatives don't have a monopoly on it. Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor both ruled against Barack Obama while he was still in office, including in NLRB v. Noel Canning, the unanimous 2014 decision that struck down his recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. Both have also sided with the Trump administration in some cases.
Ketanji Brown Jackson is probably the most partisan justice in her rulings involving the Trump administration, but she has joined unanimous rulings, including Trump v. Anderson, which kept Trump on Colorado's 2024 ballot. While I think it’s fair to say that the left-wing of the court is definitely more in lockstep with the left’s agenda, the loyalty Trump admires about them is less ironclad than he thinks.
I don't think any president should expect loyalty from his justices. A justice owes loyalty to the Constitution, and a president who wants more than that is asking for something the job was never meant to provide. Trump himself seemed to realize that when he walked the idea back mid-interview.
And, let’s face it, despite the rulings he’s not happy with, there is plenty to be happy about. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett all joined the majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade after nearly 50 years, and all three joined the 6-3 majority in Trump v. United States, which recognized presidential immunity for official acts. Those rulings will outlast any tariff dispute, and Trump made them possible.
