In late October, Donald Trump threw a surprisingly big fit because a Canadian province aired a television commercial that hurt his feelings. The commercial wasn’t especially provocative — it noted Ronald Reagan’s concerns about trade tariffs — but it apparently triggered the American president.
As part of his episodic harangue against the ad, the Republican specifically whined, “Canada is trying to illegally influence the United States Supreme Court in one of the most important rulings in the history of our Country.”
That didn’t make a lot of sense, in part because nothing suggested the high court justices were the commercial’s intended audience and in part because trying to persuade the Supreme Court is not “illegal.”
But the complaint gave away the game: As convoluted as this might seem, Trump was apparently afraid that justices might see the ad, put aside legal reasoning, agree with Canada and rule against the White House’s tariffs agenda.
Almost three months later, as much of the world waits for the high court’s ruling, the president’s anxiety appears to have reached a new level of panic. Trump published a related tirade to his social media platform on Monday afternoon that read, in part:
The actual numbers that we would have to pay back if, for any reason, the Supreme Court were to rule against the United States of America on Tariffs, would be many Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and that doesn’t include the amount of ‘payback’ that Countries and Companies would require for the Investments they are making on building Plants, Factories, and Equipment, for the purpose of being able to avoid the payment of Tariffs. When these Investments are added, we are talking about Trillions of Dollars! It would be a complete mess, and almost impossible for our Country to pay. The missive added several more sentences along these lines before concluding, “if the Supreme Court rules against the United States of America on this National Security bonanza, WE’RE SCREWED!” As a rhetorical matter, it would appear that Trump was trying to “influence the Supreme Court,” no less than the Canadians ostensibly were. As a practical matter, the argument was difficult to take seriously. If the high court sides with lower courts and rules against the White House, U.S. policy would revert to what it was before the tariffs were imposed. There would be some messy complications, to be sure, but if the president wants to reimpose his policy, he can always ask the Republican majorities in Congress to approve his agenda. But Trump doesn’t want to do that, likely because he fears lawmakers wouldn’t rubber-stamp his plan. Rather, the president wants the Supreme Court to make his life easier, so he’s lobbying the justices the only way he knows how: by trying to sway them with pitiful online appeals — despite the likelihood that a ruling in this case is almost certainly already locked in.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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