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Photo: Nordin Catic/Getty Images

Donald Trump didn’t respond instantly to the invalidation of his “Liberation Day” tariff program by the U.S. Court of International Trade (which was quickly put on temporary hold by an appeals court). But when he finally shared his thoughts on Truth Social, it was quite the explosion, even by the 47th president’s standards:

The uninhibited presidential attack on Leonard Leo, the former executive vice-president of the Federalist Society, must be deeply distressing to a lot of conservative legal beagles who revere both men as the co-creators of the current U.S. Supreme Court, along with a lot of lower-court judges across the land. They must feel like children whose parents are going through a nasty divorce. Leo has been out of the public eye since he left his full-time gig at the Federalist Society in early 2020 (though he remains co-chairman of its board) to become a sort of ideological impresario guiding right-wing nonprofits and their expenditures. But as Trump himself now confirms, he played a big role in giving what the president now calls “bad advice” on a lot of judicial nominations.

Trump’s fury at Leo has a very specific genesis, according to Politico: “Trump’s relationship with the activist is known to have grown strained over Trump’s disappointment that the three conservative justices he appointed to the court on Leo’s advice did not intervene to keep Trump in office after he lost the 2020 presidential election.”

Now, it seems, this betrayal is being replicated. One of the three trade-court judges who rejected the legality of the administration’s tariff program, Timothy Reif, was appointed during Trump’s first term. Presumably, he was vetted by Leo or Leo’s friends. Yet Reif had the audacity to thwart his presidential benefactor and his tariff fetish. So Trump has dubbed him an ingrate, and Leo is a “sleazebag” who “probably hates America.”

No one expects Trump to be a constitutional law expert (and he really isn’t; his most notable constitutional claim was that “I have an Article 2 that gives me the right to do whatever I want as president.”). But his belief that personal loyalty to the Boss negates the constitutional separation of powers, the independence of the federal judiciary, and the actual law governing cases is pretty breathtaking. In effect, he has projected his own corruption onto his appointees and is infuriated if they don’t keep up their end of a corrupt bargain. Worse yet, Trump is acting as though he is the innocent victim of Leo’s treachery in vouching for judges who bit the hand that fed them.

In any event, Trump’s latest temper tantrum has to strike fear into many ambitious hearts today. Membership in the Federalist Society had long been a sine qua non for young law students envisioning long and successful careers culminating on a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. Now, Politico suggests, it could become the mark of Cain:

[T]he full-on rupture evident in Trump’s social media post Thursday signals that Trump may now view nominees’ Federalist Society ties as toxic and any sign of a link to Leo could doom a potential nominee. That could lead to more extreme or inexperienced nominees for the federal bench, although all still require Senate confirmation.

It’s more likely, in fact, that Trump will get over his latest fit of pique and remember he has a lot of fish to fry in the federal judiciary going forward and can’t afford to cast his black-robed allies into the outer darkness. Five of the nine current Supreme Court justices (Trump’s three appointees, plus his staunchest allies, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) are current or past Federalist Society members. Even if they aren’t slavishly loyal to the 47th president, they’ve done him a lot of favors and may yet do more. It will just be hard for Trump to acknowledge that it’s anything other than what he deserves as the man who is saving America.

Trump Rages at Federalist Society for Judges’ Disobedience

Trump Rages at Federalist Society for Judges’ Disobedience