It’s well-known that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg isn’t exactly a fan of Donald Trump. During his 2016 campaign, she referred to Trump as a “faker,” and described her fears for the U.S. and the high court, saying, “I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president. For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.”
In a recent dissent noted for its “caustic tone,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor echoed Justice Ginsburg’s earlier critiques, telling the legal world how she really felt about the fact that her Supreme Court colleagues are “partly to blame for the breakdown in the appellate process” (i.e., they seem to be bending over backwards to support the federal government’s need for “emergency” relief). As it turns out, that dissent had a perhaps unexpected reader: Donald Trump himself. Not literally, of course — after all, Trump was recently trolled because he “can’t read” — but he apparently took the time to listen to a sound bite from Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News.
Trump then took it upon himself to parrot Ingraham’s critique on his Twitter megaphone, demanding that both justices recuse themselves from “his” cases:
Here’s the clip that Trump is referencing in his tweet:
Sorry, Mr. President, but as noted by the New York Times, that’s not how this works — that’s not how any of this works.
Maybe this is Trump’s way of killing off the powerful women, since he already predicted that both Ginsburg and Sotomayor would die during his presidency, but it’s highly unlikely that either of the high court’s most liberal justices will be recusing themselves from Trump-related cases any time soon.
Trump Demands Two Liberal Justices Recuse Themselves From His Cases [New York Times]
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.