With swearing-in, Trump to come face-to-face with justice he has berated as a dummy
President-elect Donald Trump and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. (Photos: Evan Vucci/AP, Nati Harnik/AP)
In July 2012, Donald Trump called in to CNBC’s “SquawkBox” show to rant about Chief Justice John Roberts’ surprise decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.
“I think John Roberts should be ashamed of himself,” Trump said, before questioning the Supreme Court justice’s intelligence. “He looks like a dummy, because, frankly, his decision does not seem to be written by [a] supposedly smart man.”
“Dummy” was just the beginning. Over the next four years, Trump tweeted that the chief justice’s decision was “bull***t,” irrational, “disloyal” and “stupidity.” He has insulted Roberts on Twitter nearly two dozen times, making the chief justice by far the biggest target of Trump’s ire on the court. That includes the court’s liberal leader, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had to apologize after calling Trump a “faker” last summer. He has tweeted about her just four times.
Though presidents have butted heads with the Supreme Court in the past, Roberts will be the first chief justice in history to swear in a new president who has so frequently and personally insulted him. (It’s unclear if Roberts shares Trump’s antipathy: He’s never been quoted commenting on the president-elect.) Trump’s very willingness to dispense with the political system’s norms of respect and deference for the judiciary could mean trouble for the pair’s relationship — and more Twitter rants — over the next four years.
https://frontier.yahoo.com/news/with-swearing-in-trump-to-come-face-to-face-with-justice-hes-berated-as-a-dummy-155955664.html
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