President Donald Trump delivered a blistering rebuke of the Supreme Court on Friday after a 6-3 majority struck down the sweeping tariffs he imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, calling the justices who ruled against him a “disgrace to our nation.”
The high court determined that Trump’s tariffs were illegal, handing what CNN described as “arguably the most important loss the second Trump administration has sustained at the conservative Supreme Court.” The ruling drew immediate and forceful condemnation from the president, who wasted no time voicing his frustration in a hastily arranged press conference.
Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joined with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in the majority opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts. The alignment stunned many of the president’s supporters, who had viewed the court’s conservative majority as a potential backstop for key administration policies.
“The Democrats on the court are thrilled, but they will automatically vote no,” Trump said Friday. “They are an automatic no, just like in Congress, they are an automatic no. They are against anything that makes America strong, healthy, and great again. They also are, frankly, a disgrace to our nation, those justices.”
The president argued that certain members of the court have repeatedly sided against him regardless of the merits of the case. “They are an automatic ‘No.’ No matter how good a case you have, it’s a ‘No,’” Trump said. While noting that loyalty is not in question for some, he suggested that others are motivated by political correctness, saying that has “happened before far too often with certain members of this court.”
Trump further accused some justices of being influenced by what he described as political forces aligned with “RINOS and the radical left Democrats,” asserting that their decisions have strayed from constitutional principles. “They are very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution,” he said.
The president went even further, suggesting that outside pressures may have played a role in the court’s ruling. “It’s my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests in a political movement far smaller than people would think,” Trump said. He characterized that movement as “small,” contrasting it with his own electoral success.
“I won by millions of votes. We won in a landslide. With all the cheating that went on, there was a lot of it, we still won in a landslide. Too big to rig,” Trump said, reiterating his longstanding claims about the scale of his victory.
Despite the setback, Trump framed the court’s ruling as the product of what he described as a vocal minority exerting outsized influence. “These people are obnoxious, ignorant, and loud, very loud,” he said, adding that he believes certain justices are “afraid of that.”
The decision marks a significant legal blow to the administration’s tariff strategy and sets the stage for what could be an ongoing clash between the executive branch and the nation’s highest court.
