President Trump said his three Supreme Court picks vote against him too often after lifetime appointments, and that he at least admires the stick-together loyalty of Obama and Biden justices.
In a wide-ranging New York Post report on a Time magazine interview, President Trump unloaded on Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, the three nominees he placed on the high court.
Trump said the trio has ruled against him on tariffs, birthright citizenship, and mail-in voting rules, calling some of those outcomes very disappointing after he gave them “the position of a lifetime.” He drew a sharp contrast with Democratic-appointed justices who, in his telling, vote as a bloc.
“I put them in. They voted against me too often,” Trump told Time. He added that he gave them the chance of a lifetime and that it was unfortunate what they did, not to him, but to the country.
Trump zeroed in on the tariff fight. In February, Gorsuch and Barrett voted to invalidate his new 10% baseline tariff for most countries and a levy aimed at China, Mexico, and Canada as punishment for fentanyl smuggling.
That outcome, the reporting states, entitled businesses to more than $100 billion in refunds. Trump called the tariff decision disastrous for the country and said a simple clause could have changed the math.
“All they had to do was a little clause saying any money paid does not have to be paid back...would have saved $400 billion. They chose not to save that,” he said.
Those refund figures and the votes sit at the center of his complaint. He has also rebuked the Court over tariff and birthright citizenship decisions in earlier remarks, keeping the same fights in public view.
Trump linked his disappointment to the Court’s handling of his executive order on birthright citizenship. Barrett voted with the majority to overturn the order that sought to deny citizenship to children of parents who are not citizens or permanent residents. Kavanaugh concurred in part and dissented in part.
In the Time interview, Trump framed the decision as costly and disconnected from the amendment’s original purpose.
He told the magazine the ruling helped turn birthright citizenship into what he called a major industry, with people making millions while the country loses trillions. “It’s become a corrupt business, all because of the Supreme Court decision,” he said. “That decision was for the babies of slaves... It wasn’t for Chinese people, wealthy or unwealthy, coming, you know, pouring into our country.”
Breitbart reported that Trump tied the same frustration to both the birthright citizenship loss and the tariff ruling, and noted he had already criticized the three justices over mail-in ballot rules.
On Sept. 15, after Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh voted against his proposed rules for mail-in voting, Trump tore into the trio on social media. He wrote that “these are not the people I interviewed.”
Days later, on Sept. 24, he still handed out scarce access. He gave four of just 134 tickets to the U.S.-China state dinner to Barrett, Kavanaugh, and their spouses, a public signal that personal courtesy and policy disagreement can sit side by side.
The pattern is clear in the timeline: adverse votes on mail-in rules, a public rebuke, then dinner invitations, then a full airing of grievances in the Time interview.
Court watchers tracking other flashpoints have seen the same institution under pressure from multiple directions, including when the Supreme Court blocked Missouri Republicans’ third bid for a new House map.
Trump’s sharpest comparative line was about Democratic appointees. He said those justices “stick like glue,” virtually never vary, and vote as a group even on the worst measure.
“The Democrats stick like glue, those three, they virtually never vary. You can come up with the worst thing in the world and they’ll vote as a group. And while I don’t like it, there’s something I admire about it: there’s loyalty. So they have loyalty to Barack Hussein Obama.”
He went further on Biden, saying the justices have loyalty to him “even though Biden doesn’t even know who the h*** they are. He wouldn’t know. He doesn’t even know what the Supreme Court is.”
Then he drew his own standard. “I don’t want loyalty. I want good decisions. The tariff decision was disastrous for the country.”
Just The News reported the same core regret, that the three nominees vote against him often, while noting Trump secured three confirmations in his first term and that his strongest criticism has targeted the Court’s upholding of birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment.
The Washington Examiner, covering the same interview, underscored the regret frame around lifetime seats and repeated no votes. The Washington Examiner highlighted Trump’s line that he put them in and they voted against him too often after he had given them the position of a lifetime.
Trump also said they vote for him too. The complaint is frequency and consequence, not a claim of permanent opposition.
Strip away the heat and the verified record is straightforward. Gorsuch and Barrett joined the February tariff invalidation that opened the door to more than $100 billion in business refunds. Barrett joined the majority that struck down the birthright citizenship order; Kavanaugh split his position. All three rejected the president’s proposed mail-in voting rules, prompting the Sept. 15 social media blast.
Trump’s public case is that those outcomes carried national price tags, refunds already in the hundreds of billions on his telling, and birthright rules he says now fuel a costly industry. He wanted a narrow clause on tariffs. He did not get it.
Separate Court fights continue to draw attention, from emergency docket disputes to custody cases. Readers following the bench have also seen coverage of how Jackson warns emergency docket risks corroding the courts as Trump wins pile up, and of moments when the Supreme Court stepped aside as a surrogate who refused abortion lost a custody fight.
None of that erases the specific votes Trump named. It only shows how often the Court sits at the center of live policy fights.
Supreme Court justices hold their seats for life. Presidents nominate; the Senate confirms; the country lives with the jurisprudence for decades. Trump is now doing something presidents rarely do in open interviews: keeping a public scorecard on his own nominees’ biggest losses.
He still hosted two of the three justices at a high-profile state dinner weeks after the mail-in rules defeat. He still says they vote with him at times. And he still insists the standard is good decisions, not personal loyalty.
That is the tension he put on the record. Lifetime power was granted. On tariffs, birthright citizenship, and mail-in rules, the votes did not go his way. He called the tariff result disastrous and said a short clause would have saved hundreds of billions. He said the birthright decision opened the door to a corrupt business. He said Democratic appointees at least stay glued together.
For taxpayers watching refund totals climb past $100 billion and border-and-citizenship policy remain unsettled, the argument is not abstract. It is about who pays when major rulings land.
Presidents nominate. Justices decide. The country keeps the bill, and the record of who voted which way.
