Roberts can't control the mess he made

[marmar]

Trump is becoming a bigger problem for the Supreme Court — and John Roberts can't control it
After extending presidential immunity in Trump's Jan. 6 case, the court has no room to stop Trump's judicial attack

By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published March 19, 2025 9:37AM (EDT)


(Salon) ast Friday, President Trump gave a speech at the Department of Justice to an assembled staff full of handpicked supporters. He had a prepared transcript about "law and order" but spent most of the hour talking off the cuff about his grievances against the justice system he believes did him wrong. The New York Times described it this way:

He delivered a grievance-filled attack on the very people who have worked in the building and others like them. As he singled out some targets of his rage, he appeared to offer his own vision of justice in America, one defined by personal vengeance rather than by institutional principles. “These are people that are bad people, really bad people,” Mr. Trump said. “They tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and third-world country, but in the end, the thugs failed and the truth won.”

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By this time you are probably screaming to yourself, "Is he kidding? The man who so gravely insulted, threatened and degraded nearly every judge he came in front of they had to throw gag orders on him to keep their families and courthouse staff safe from his rabid followers is saying it should be illegal to criticize judges?" To call it hypocritical is laughably inadequate and chutzpah doesn't even begin to describe it.

But it does reveal his own motivation in using that very tactic, not that it was hard to discern before. He does exactly what he accused his so-called enemies of doing. He threatens judges he doesn't think are favorable enough to him with the expectation that they will bend over backward to show "fairness" and prove they are not biased as he claims they are. The "playing the refs" gambit is hardly a secret and Trump hasn't exactly been subtle about it.

....(snip)....

Whether the Supreme Court's shocking decision to use Trump's Jan. 6 case to create "presidential immunity" out of nothing was motivated by sympathy or fear is unknown but their delay in deciding it was certainly a factor in making it impossible to further litigate the federal cases against Trump to determine if they qualified under the new rule. ............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/03/19/is-becoming-a-bigger-problem-for-the--and-john-roberts-cant-control-it/