Trump Says He Regrets Nominating Gorsuch, Barrett and Kavanaugh: 'They Voted Against Me Too Often'
In a TIME interview, the president says he put all three justices on the Supreme Court and doesn't want loyalty from them, just 'good decisions.'
President Donald Trump said he regrets nominating Justices Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, saying they have ruled against him too often.
Trump made the remark in a wide-ranging interview with TIME at the White House on Sept. 28. The magazine published the full interview Thursday. Asked directly whether he regretted the three nominations, Trump answered, "Yeah. Yeah." He added: "What can I do? I put them in. They voted against me too often."
He said he had given the three the position of a lifetime. Asked about loyalty, he first said, "I do like loyalty, yeah," and then corrected himself. "No, I don't want loyalty. I want good decisions."
The comments follow two recent defeats at the high court. In February, a 6-3 majority that included Gorsuch and Barrett struck down the sweeping global tariffs Trump had imposed under a law meant for national emergencies, finding they were illegal. After that ruling, Trump posted on Truth Social that the justices were "merely a shell of their original selves," and he has said before that his own picks "sicken" him.
More recently, the court declined to let the Postal Service put in place a rule restricting the use of mail-in ballots in the November midterm elections. In that case Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, while Kavanaugh wrote that there simply was not enough time before the election.
Trump appointed all three justices in his first term, and together with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Alito and Thomas they form a 6-3 conservative majority that has moved the law rightward since 2020. The three Trump appointees have sided with him on many matters, including on presidential power and on immigration, but have split from him on several major cases involving his second-term agenda.
Justices cannot be removed over how they rule, and the Constitution gives them life tenure. The only route to removal is impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate, which has never happened to a justice. Trump has not proposed it and the interview did not include any suggestion that he would try.
The president's remarks are a rare public break from a core promise of his first term, when conservative legal groups helped him pick judges and he told voters the court would be remade. They also come five weeks before the midterms, with several cases involving his administration's policies still pending before the justices.
