Trump issues thinly veiled threat to Supreme Court as birthright citizenship under scrutiny: ‘Playing the ref’
After his executive order targeting birthright citizenship fell flat in front of a mostly skeptical Supreme Court, Donald Trump accused his political opponents of “playing the ref” through the courts to overturn his threat to the 14th Amendment.
“The Radical Left SleazeBags, which has no cards remaining in its illegal bag of tricks, is, in a very coordinated manner, PLAYING THE REF with regard to the United States Supreme Court,” Trump wrote.
“They lost the Election in a landslide, and with it, have totally lost their confidence and reason. They are stone cold CRAZY! I hope the Supreme Court doesn’t fall for the games they play,” he added.
In a separate post, written in all-caps, he claimed the nation’s high court is “BEING PLAYED BY THE RADICAL LEFT LOSERS” whose “ONLY HOPE IS THE INTIMIDATION OF THE COURT, ITSELF.”
More than 20 states, immigrants’ advocacy groups and pregnant plaintiffs have sued the administration to block his executive order that attempts to unilaterally redefine the Constitution to determine who is eligible for citizenship.
Three federal judges and appellate court panels have argued it’s unconstitutional and blocked the measure from taking effect nationwide while legal challenges continue. On Thursday, the Supreme Court’s liberal justices appeared shocked at the president’s “unlawful” measure.
But the administration is asking the court to limit the authority of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions, which have imperiled the president’s aggressive agenda, issued largely through an avalanche of executive orders.
The president has repeatedly claimed it’s “illegal” to criticize both his policies that have been challenged in court as well as the judges who have ruled in his favor.
“You know what playing the ref is? Like the great Bobby Knight basketball coach,” Trump said during a speech to the Department of Justice earlier this year, referencing the former Indiana University basketball coach. “He’d scream and scream at the ref. He’d scream.”
Knight “wanted to scare the hell” out of the refs just like “they wanted to scare the hell out of judges,” Trump said.
“They” also treated the conservative Supreme Court justices “unbelievably badly,” he added. “They’re hoping that they can sway them to go along because, again, what do they do?”
In his speech, he told federal prosecutors and law enforcement assembled in front of him that press coverage criticizing judges is influencing their decisions and should be “illegal.”
“Remember the term,” he said in remarks at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last year.
“Playing the ref with our judges and our justices should be punishable by very serious fines and beyond that,” he said.
