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Trump targets SCOTUS for stochastic terror
He knew what he was doing by bringing up justices' families.
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During his State of the Union speech, Trump called the Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his illegal tariffs “very unfortunate.” With the justices sitting before him, it was an awkward moment, but it marked a deescalation from the last time he brought up the Court.
Instead of taking the ruling as an opportunity to abandon a policy that has been a dead weight on his approval numbers, Trump’s immediate response during a news conference last Friday was to double down on tariffs and target the six justices who defied him with one of his most dangerous rhetorical tools.
Trump began by launching a series of vicious personal attacks, including saying he was “ashamed of certain members of the Court,” blasting liberal justices as “against anything that makes the country strong, healthy, and great again,” and calling them “a disgrace to our nation.”
But he didn’t stop there. He also targeted the conservative justices who voted against him — including his own appointees.
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Trump blared that Chief Justice John Roberts and his own appointees Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch were disloyal “fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and radical left Democrats,” and added that those who opposed him were “very unpatriotic and disloyal to the Constitution.” He continued up by claiming, without evidence, that the Court had been “swayed by foreign interests” and that Barrett and Gorsuch were “an embarrassment to their families.”
This kind of rhetoric from Trump is not unusual. He often paints those who thwart him as traitors to the country or as personally disloyal (he does not see any difference between the two). He often uses extremely insulting language, denigrating his opponents in ways intended to diminish and dismiss them.
But the fact these attacks are common shouldn’t blind us to their power. When the president of the United States declares someone to be an enemy of the state, a lot of his partisans believe him — and some of those partisans take action.
There is good reason to believe that the justices who voted against Trump — and especially perhaps Barrett and Gorsuch — have already received death threats and harassment because of his words. Everyone who opposes Trump knows that he will try to wield his MAGA army against them in violent ways. How that affects people in each instance is difficult to know for sure. But we do know it is bad for democracy.
The Inciter in Chief
Why should we suspect that justices who opposed Trump have received death threats? There are a couple of reasons.
First, his words are calculated to make his followers angry, and to make them feel the justices are trying to personally betray and harm them. He calls them “unpatriotic” and “disloyal” and suggests they are colluding with foreign adversaries. He also specifically directed attention to the families of Gorsuch and Barrett.