Trump Straight-Up Says He Regrets Nominating All 3 of His Supreme Court Picks

It seems President Donald Trump is confusing the phrase “order in the court” with “I want to order the court to do my bidding.”

In an interview with Time on Thursday, Trump got salty about three of his Supreme Court picks and bemoaned that Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett voted against him “too often.”

“Yeah. Yeah. What can I do? I put them in. They voted against me too often,” Trump complained to Time after the magazine asked him if he regretted his nominees. “I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often. They vote for me too.”

Trump then compared his appointees to the court’s three Democratic-appointed justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“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,” Trump said.

Although the president said he doesn’t particularly “like” that they do this, he did express admiration for what he perceives as “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. He wouldn’t know. He doesn’t even know what the Supreme Court is,” Trump said. “And me, I gave them the chance of a lifetime, and it’s unfortunate what they did.”

Time seemed particularly interested in Trump’s use of the word “loyalty” and asked him if that was “what you want from your Supreme Court picks?”

“I do like loyalty, yeah,” Trump responded.

Trump gave a slightly more nuanced answer after Time asked him relatively the same question again.

“No, I don’t want loyalty,” Trump said. “I want good decisions. The tariff decision was disastrous for the country. I want good decisions for the country.”

The president’s Veruca Salt-like rant about how his court appointees won’t completely bend to his will stems from several major Supreme Court defeats during Trump’s second term.

While speaking to Time, Trump singled out two rulings he really did not like. One occurred in February, when the court ruled in a stunning 6-3 decision that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not give Trump the authority to impose his “emergency” tariffs. Gorsuch and Coney Barrett joined the majority opinion, while Kavanaugh dissented.

Trump was also miffed about the court’s ruling on birthright citizenship in June, which upholds the Constitution’s guarantee that those born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens. In the 6-3 decision, Coney Barrett ruled that Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship violated the 14th Amendment. Kavanaugh concurred while Gorsuch dissented.

“It’s unfortunate what they did—not to me, to our country,” Trump told Time.

“Birthright citizenship. It’s becoming a major industry now,” the president claimed. “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.

“That decision was for the babies of slaves,” he continued. “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.”

Trump then set his sights on the tariff 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. They chose not to save that.”

Trump ultimately described his appointees as “disappointing.”

“Look, I put these people in,” Trump said. “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?”

Read the entire interview over at Time.