Right out of the gate, Kavanaugh described President Trump as someone who has “great appreciation” for judges. Look, there are positive things Kavanaugh could have said about Trump that might be have been mildly believable, but this sure as hell wasn’t one of them.
Remember 2017? Trump had been in office just a few weeks when Seattle Federal District Judge James Robart issued a temporary restraining order halting halted enforcement of President Trump’s executive order on immigration. Trump’s immediate (and predictable) response was to take to Twitter, abuse the judge, and call his authority into question:
And let’s keep in mind. There was nothing remotely unusual about the fact that Trump’s executive order was the subject of litigation. That happens all the time, and in normal times, presidents just deal with it. When all this was going down, Neil Gorsuch even piped up and condemned Trump’s attack on Judge Robart, telling the New York Times:
“To this day, one of the surest proofs any nation enjoys an independent judiciary must be that the government can and does lose in litigation before its ‘own’ courts like anyone else.”
In the days to follow, Trump continued to hint that he might not follow the Court’s order — which caused some to speculate that his attitude toward judges might just be planting the seeds of impeachment.
Trump has also wasted no opportunity to badmouth the Ninth Circuit:
Right. Because it definitely shows “great appreciation” for judges when a sitting president calls a federal circuit court “ridiculous.”
Speaking of judges, there was also that time when Trump called Judge Gonzalo Curiel, “Mexican” and insisted that Judge Curiel recuse himself from presiding over the Trump University lawsuit.
Perhaps Judge Kavanaugh should have clarified that Trump has “great appreciation” for only those judges who rule in his favor, as Trump clearly hopes Kavanaugh will do in the inevitable question of presidential immunity.