President Donald Trump does not hide his feelings, and Wednesday night at a National Republican Congressional Committee dinner in Washington, as reported by multiple outlets including Fox News, those feelings were aimed squarely at two justices he personally appointed to the Supreme Court. In remarks that quickly went viral, Trump blasted Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch as “bad for our country” and admitted they “sicken me” for their role in a recent Supreme Court ruling that blocked his tariff agenda, according to transcripts from the event. The president’s frustration stems from a 6-3 Supreme Court decision handed down last month that struck down Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose broad tariffs, with Chief Justice John Roberts authoring the majority opinion as detailed in the court’s official release.
Roberts was joined by the three liberal justices plus Barrett and Gorsuch in that ruling, which stated that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose sweeping tariffs of the magnitude Trump had enacted, based on the Supreme Court’s published opinion. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh dissented, according to the same court documents. “Bad courts in this country are costing us a tremendous amount of money,” Trump told the GOP crowd at Union Station, as quoted in reports from The Washington Examiner. “The Supreme Court, that’s right, of the United States, cost our country, all they needed was a sentence, our country hundreds of billions of dollars, and they couldn’t care less. They couldn’t care less.”
Then came the moment that has dominated headlines. “Two of the people that voted for that, I appointed, and they sicken me,” Trump said, his voice carrying the unmistakable tone of betrayal, according to audio clips shared by conservative media outlets. “They sicken me because they’re bad for our country.” It is rare, almost unprecedented, for a sitting president to publicly attack Supreme Court justices he himself elevated to the bench, as noted in analyses from The Federalist. Trump nominated Gorsuch in 2017 after a bruising confirmation battle that saw Republicans change Senate rules to overcome a Democratic filibuster, per historical records from the Senate. He appointed Barrett in 2020 following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, cementing a conservative majority that has delivered victories on abortion, gun rights, and regulatory overreach, as documented in Supreme Court summaries.
But on tariffs, the issue closest to Trump’s economic heart, both appointees sided against him. The president’s anger is not merely personal; Trump genuinely believes his tariff strategy is essential to rebuilding American manufacturing and correcting decades of trade imbalances that have hollowed out the industrial Midwest, as he has repeatedly stated in campaign speeches and interviews with outlets like Breitbart. When the Supreme Court took that tool away, they did not just frustrate a policy preference. They struck at the core of his economic vision for the country, from Trump’s perspective as expressed in his public remarks. From Trump’s perspective, Barrett and Gorsuch did not just rule against him. They ruled against the American workers who sent him to the White House.
Chief Justice Roberts, who has become increasingly vocal about threats to judicial independence, warned earlier this month against personal attacks on federal judges, according to his speech at Rice University as reported by The Associated Press. Speaking at Rice University, Roberts distinguished between criticizing a court’s reasoning and attacking the judge personally, noting that hostile rhetoric has become “dangerous.” But Trump’s supporters would argue that when judges make decisions with massive economic consequences for ordinary Americans, those judges should expect to face public scrutiny, as voiced in conservative commentaries from sources like The Daily Wire. Accountability is not harassment.
The broader question this episode raises is whether the conservative legal movement’s emphasis on judicial restraint and textualism is compatible with a populist president who views the administrative state and international trade architecture as fundamentally rigged against American interests. Gorsuch and Barrett applied a strict reading of IEEPA and found it did not authorize Trump’s tariffs, based on the Supreme Court’s opinion. Trump sees that as pedantic legalism in the face of a national emergency, as he articulated in his dinner speech. What happens next is unclear. The Supreme Court’s ruling stands, and Trump will need to work with Congress if he wants to impose broad tariffs going forward, according to legal experts cited in Politico. But the rupture between the president and two of his judicial appointees is now public and personal. For voters who supported Trump precisely because he fights, his willingness to call out even his own picks when they disappoint him will likely reinforce their support. For others, it is another example of a president who cannot tolerate any institution that checks his power.
Either way, the dinner at Union Station made one thing clear: Donald Trump expected loyalty from his Supreme Court picks, and he feels he did not get it. Providence watches over the bold.
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