President Donald Trump sees the world in a very black-and-white way: There are people who love him and people who don’t. Or, put another way: There are people who are loyal to him and those who are always out to get him.
It’s a deeply simplistic way to think of life and the people in it. It’s also hugely selfish, always believing that every action – and equal and opposite reaction – are all about you, and how people feel about you.
Which brings me to how the President has responded to a series of Supreme Court decisions over the past few weeks.
“The Supreme Court sends case back to Lower Court, arguments to continue,” Trump tweeted Thursday morning on the court’s ruling on a subpoena of his financial records by the Manhattan district attorney. “This is all a political prosecution. I won the Mueller Witch Hunt, and others, and now I have to keep fighting in a politically corrupt New York. Not fair to this Presidency or Administration!”
He added: “Courts in the past have given ‘broad deference’. BUT NOT ME!”
When the Court issued a series of rulings last month that went against Trump on DACA and LGBTQ rights in the workplace, he tweeted this:
“These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!”
And for good measure, added this: “Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?”
Me, me, me, me.
What Trump fails to understand – and has never understood – is that the Supreme Court doesn’t work for him.
Yes, he appointed Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to their current seats. But that doesn’t guarantee him their loyalty. They pledge allegiance to the law, not to Donald Trump.
And had Trump been listening to what Kavanaugh and Gorsuch said when he announced their selections, he would have heard them make that plain.
“My judicial philosophy is straightforward: A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law,” said Kavanaugh in July 2018. “A judge must interpret statutes as written, and a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.”
During Gorsuch’s confirmation process, he described Trump’s attacks on judges who didn’t rule the way he wanted them to as “demoralizing” and “disheartening.”
The writing was on the wall. Yes, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were thankful that Trump picked them for a lifetime appointment to the most powerful court in the country. But no, they didn’t plan on unquestioningly doing his bidding simply because he decided to appoint them.
Because Trump is so deeply transactional – and self-centered – he simply couldn’t (or didn’t) hear what the soon-to-be-justices were telling him. To Trump, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh would always be his Supreme Court justices, After all, they wouldn’t be there without him! They owed (and owe) him!
It’s the same logic that led Trump to sour on his former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from the Russia investigation so as to ensure there was no appearance of undue influence. Trump attacked Sessions’ decision primarily because he believed it to be was detrimental to him and his presidency. That’s the same logic that Trump displayed when he referred to his military leadership as “my generals.” And the same logic that leads him to attack any Republican elected official who dares publicly disagree with him on, well, anything.
You can see why, then, Trump takes any supposed slight among “his” people so personally.
Because he expects every person he appoints in (and out) of government to be loyal to him first, second and last, when they are not sufficiently loyal (as judged by Trump), he sees it as a personal affront. Sessions was out to hurt him. Defense Secretary James Mattis and White House chief of staff John Kelly let him down. The Supreme Court doesn’t like him.
What that view misses, of course, is that the Supreme Court (or the defense secretary or the attorney general) aren’t supposed to simply do Trump’s bidding. Especially in the case of the court, their job is to interpret the law. Trump – and what he wants – doesn’t factor into it. So, when the court upholds the rights of gays and lesbians in the workforce under federal civil rights law, it’s not because they don’t like Donald Trump. It’s because they believe that the Constitution guarantees those individuals protection under the law. It literally has nothing at all to do with Trump.
The federal government – or the broader executive, judicial and legislative branches – don’t work like a Mafia family where the don’s word (ahem) is law. There is a system of checks and balances built in – by the Founding Fathers – that are aimed, specifically, at making sure that no one person has total power withing our system. It’s the very reason we broke away from the monarchical rule of England!
That the President of the United States can’t understand that is, frankly, a little disquieting.
CNN’s Allison Gordon contributed to this report.