Writer floats 'chilling possibility' about why Trump is 'pissing off the Chief Justice'
Chief Justice John Roberts may have been sending Donald Trump a message, but it's the President's response that concerned a Supreme Court writer on Saturday.
Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern appeared on MSNBC over the weekend, and was asked about Roberts issuing a rare statement suggesting that appeals, not impeachments, are how to handle court orders you don't like.
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The writer said, "I think that as an institutionalist, John Roberts often operates like a pendulum, right? When there's a Democrat in office, he swings to the right. When there's a Republican in office, he swings not to the left, but more toward the center, and I think he's telegraphing to us that he is really not happy with the way that the Trump administration has conducted this case so far."
He added that there have been "these outrageous filings deriding and degrading Judge Boasberg to his face, asking for him to be disqualified from the case."
"You know, the president himself calling for impeachment. That is like the number one way to piss off the chief justice. And I think it's going to really work against the administration in court," he said. "And either they know that and they don't care, or they've decided that if and when the Supreme Court rules against them here, they'll just defy the order. And that's the most chilling possibility."