President Donald Trump has ramped up his attacks on Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.
During a press conference in India on Tuesday, Trump continued to accuse the justices of bias against him. His lines of attack began on Monday night with a pair of tweets.
….on all Trump, or Trump related, matters! While “elections have consequences”, I only ask for fairness, especially when it comes to decisions made by the United States Supreme Court!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 25, 2020
Then, during a press conference in India, Trump again said the justices should recuse themselves from any cases involving his administration.
“It’s very obvious,” Trump said. “Justice Ginsburg should [recuse herself] because she went wild during the campaign when I was running.”
He added that Justice Sotomayor was “trying to shame people with perhaps a different view.”
Trump, during news conference in India, explains that he thinks Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg should recuse herself from cases involving him because she didn't support him in 2016. He also calls on Justice Sotomayor to recuse herself for an unspecified "inappropriate" statement. pic.twitter.com/fb0WqOXKvp
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 25, 2020
The tension with Ginsburg goes back to 2016 when she said Trump was a “faker” who “has no consistency about him.” Ginsburg later said she regretted the remarks.
Sotomayor drew Trump’s ire after writing a strong dissent against the conservative justices for repeatedly issuing “stays” against lower court rulings that were holding up some of Trump’s policy priorities, as USA Today reports. Sotomayor did not accuse the conservative justices of being pro-Trump, but she did say they’ve been too quick to grant emergency relief to the federal government.
“It is hard to say what is more troubling: that the Government would seek this extraordinary relief seemingly as a matter of course, or that the Court would grant it,” Sotomayor wrote.
She added that the government’s cries of urgency “ring increasingly hollow” because of how frequent they are. Trump and his allies have maintained that it’s the lower courts — who continuously try to block Trump policies with nationwide injunctions — that are causing the chaos.
“I just don’t know how they cannot recuse themselves from anything having to do with Trump or Trump-related,” Trump said of the two justices.
