Blanche defends president’s right to criticize justices
President Donald Trump on Tuesday used Truth Social to declare that the three Supreme Court justices he appointed during his first term had become unrecognizable to him, a day after the court blocked his administration’s plan to impose new federal requirements on mail ballots for the November 3 midterm elections.
In the post, Trump wrote that “these are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves.” The statement was a reference to Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, all of whom Trump appointed during his first term.
The president’s criticism followed a Supreme Court ruling on Monday that blocked the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing a plan that would have required states to redesign their ballot envelopes and upload voter data into a federal online portal. Under the plan, the Postal Service would have refused to deliver ballots in states that did not comply. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
State and local officials had argued that the rules exceeded the Postal Service’s authority and would have been impossible to implement so close to the November 3 midterm elections.
Attorney General Todd Blanche defended Trump’s remarks during a Tuesday appearance in the White House Rose Garden — an unusual setting for a news briefing by the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Blanche said Trump is “very frustrated” and “should communicate his concerns with the Supreme Court whenever he has them.”
“The real question is whether the president of the United States is allowed to be critical of another branch of government,” Blanche said. “And the answer to that is, absolutely, of course he is.”
Blanche indicated that the administration would comply with the court’s decision. “That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to do everything in this administration that we can,” he said, “to make sure that there are free and fair elections.”
The Rose Garden appearance underscored how closely Blanche has aligned himself with the president. Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, has also said Trump has the right and responsibility to involve himself in the Justice Department’s historically independent criminal investigations.
Tuesday’s comments were not the first time Trump has criticized the justices he elevated to the court. In February, after the court struck down his global tariffs, Trump called the six justices who voted against him unpatriotic “fools” and “lap dogs.” He singled out Gorsuch and Barrett for particular criticism, calling them “an embarrassment to their families.” Kavanaugh, who joined Thomas and Alito in voting in Trump’s favor on the tariffs ruling, received Trump’s praise as his “new hero.”
The president’s tone toward the court has vacillated since the February comments. By June, Trump said “the Republican Party was treated very fairly by the Supreme Court” in the term that had just concluded, which produced mixed results for his priorities. According to The Wall Street Journal, the president lost his bids that term to enact tariffs, curtail birthright citizenship and remake the Federal Reserve, but he won broader control over independent agencies and immigration enforcement.
Just two weeks before Monday’s ruling against his mail ballot plan, the court had handed Trump a significant victory on one of his pet projects, allowing him to continue building his White House ballroom — a decision Trump publicly cheered at length.
The court’s June term — which produced the mixed record for the president’s priorities that Trump cited when describing the Republican Party as having been treated “very fairly” — was previously covered by MSI.