When a Donald Trump-appointed judge delivered a stinging rejection of his effort to put National Guard troops on the ground in Portland, the president had some regrets.
“I wasn’t served well by the people that pick judges,” Trump vented Saturday.
His gripe came four months after he similarly sounded off about the “bad advice” he got from the conservative Federalist Society for his first-term judicial nominations — a reaction to a ruling, backed by a Trump-appointed judge, rejecting his power to impose sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners.
“You scratch my back I maybe scratch yours, someday, if I feel like it” is the only way Trump can process the world.
I’m certain he sees it that way. Everything in his life is transactional, so “his” judges putting the actual rule of law first is a betrayal in his limited view.
Everything is zero sum and transactional