Last Friday President Trump gave a speech at the Department of Justice to assembled staff which appeared to be handpicked supporters. He had a prepared transcript about “law and order” but spent most of the hour talking off the cuff about his grievances against the justice system he believes did him wrong. The New York Times described it this way:
He delivered a grievance-filled attack on the very people who have worked in the building and others like them. As he singled out some targets of his rage, he appeared to offer his own vision of justice in America, one defined by personal vengeance rather than by institutional principles. “These are people that are bad people, really bad people,” Mr. Trump said. “They tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and third-world country, but in the end, the thugs failed and the truth won.”
He spent quite a bit of time on the idea that his enemies had intimidated and derided Judge Aileen Cannon who presided over the stolen classified documents case in Palm Beach Florida. He said she was strong and tough, “the absolute model of what a judge should be.” He went on an extended riff about the late basketball coach Bobby Knight explaining that this is a tactic used to “play the refs.”
He said:
He’d scream at the ref. He’d scream so hard, oh boy, it was terrible actually. And the people would come up, his assistant coaches would come up, the players. Coach, coach, don’t do that. Don’t do it…That’s when he threw the chair, he starts going crazy.
And he said, no, he’s not going to change this time, but he’s going to change for the next play.
Trump claimed that’s what his enemies did to Judge Cannon and that he doesn’t think it’s legal. But according to him, it didn’t work with her, she just “got angry.” (If true, it would be interesting to know how he knows that.)
He babbled on for quite a while on the subject of his “unfair” court cases and then said that Supreme Court is also being intimidated:
“Remember the way they treated Justice Thomas and Justice Alito and Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Gorsuch? Chief Justice Roberts gets treated unbelievably badly and they’re hoping that they can sway them to go along because, again, what do they do…they’re humans and they don’t like being accused of incompetence… they’re in a position; they can’t fight back really very well and so sometimes they get weak.”
By this time you are probably screaming to yourself, “Is he kidding? The man who so gravely insulted, threatened and degraded nearly every judge he came in front of they had to throw gag orders on him to keep their families and courthouse staff safe from his rabid followers is saying it should be illegal to criticize judges?” To call it hypocritical is laughably inadequate and chutzpah doesn’t even begin to describe it.
But it does reveal his own motivation in using that very tactic, not that it was hard to discern before. He does exactly what he accused his so-called enemies of doing. He threatens judges he doesn’t think are favorable enough to him with the expectation that they will bend over backwards to show “fairness” and prove they are not biased as he claims they are. The “playing the refs” gambit is hardly a secret and Trump hasn’t exactly been subtle about it.
Any American has the right to criticize judges but defendants usually don’t do it because generally it’s a bad idea to unnecessarily antagonize someone who has such power over your life. Trump behaves more like a Mafia boss whose insults can be interpreted by his lieutenants as an order to commit violence. It’s hard to know how well it works but it’s logical to assume that if nothing else it helped delay some of his cases, even those in which he was ultimately found guilty.
Whether the Supreme Court’s shocking decision to use Trump’s January 6th case to create “presidential immunity” out of nothing was motivated by sympathy or fear is unknown but their delay in deciding it was certainly a factor in making it impossible to further litigate the federal cases against him to determine if they qualified under the new rule.
And Trump is grateful. After the joint session of Congress last month, he walked down to the Supreme Court Justices in attendance and shook the Chief John Roberts’ hand saying, “thank you , thank you, I won’t forget it.” (He later claimed that he was thanking him for swearing him in on inauguration day but that’s hardly believable.) Already facing massive legal challenges to his reckless DOGE program, among other things, he was rightfully suspected of thanking the Chief for that immunity ruling.
Despite his tirade at the DOJ against his enemies “playing the refs” Trump went right out and insulted the judge in the latest case in DC challenging his ludicrous claim to wartime powers to deport people to a foreign prison with no due process. And this time, he’s joined his comrade in arms, Elon Musk as well as House Republicans who are calling for the impeachment of federal judges who don’t immediately capitulate to their arguments:
In a highly unusual move, Chief Justice Roberts put out a statement just hours later which said, “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Again, keep in mind that Trump knows better than anyone that impeachment will not work unless they have 67 Senate votes to convict in the Senate and Chief Justice Roberts knows that as well. So basically, it appears that Justice Roberts wanted to send a message to Trump that he is not amused by his “ref-playing.”
Trump’s response was:
Roberts is no doubt aware that the comment Trump made after the big speech last month thanking him and saying “I won’t forget it” went viral. And I assume that he hears the talk coming from Trump’s White House like this from Rolling Stone:
Another close Trump adviser simply says that the president’s ultimate leverage against certain judges who try to stand in the way of his agenda is that the judiciary does not command an army, while the president of the United States does. “Are they going to come and arrest him?” the adviser asked, rhetorically.
Trump’s “ref-working” against every judge who doesn’t rule his way is becoming a big problem for the Supreme Court and the Chief Justice knows it. Whether he and his colleagues will have the fortitude to stand up to him and preserve the Constitution and American democracy when the time comes is a bet I wouldn’t want to make after what they did with the January 6th case. Their credibility is already fragile.
But maybe Trump’s antics have broken through a little bit to show that no matter how grateful he is for the get-out-of-jail free card they’re not any safer from the chainsaw than the rest of us.
Salon
Update— This is interesting:
