For nearly eight months, President Trump has boasted that appointing Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court ranks high among his signature achievements.
But earlier this year, Trump talked about rescinding Gorsuch’s nomination, venting angrily to advisers after his Supreme Court pick was critical of the president’s escalating attacks on the federal judiciary in private meetings with legislators.
.. Trump, according to several people with knowledge of the discussions, was upset that Gorsuch had pointedly distanced himself from the president in a private February meeting with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), telling the senator he found Trump’s repeated attacks on the federal judiciary “disheartening” and “demoralizing.”
The president worried that Gorsuch would not be “loyal,” one of the people said, and told aides that he was tempted to pull Gorsuch’s nomination — and that he knew plenty of other judges who would want the job.
.. Trump was especially upset by what he viewed as Gorsuch’s insufficient gratitude for a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court
.. Advisers also told Trump that Gorsuch was trying to demonstrate the independence necessary to make it through the confirmation process and that pulling the nomination would have far-reaching repercussions and might infuriate supporters who were enthusiastic about the conservative jurist.
.. In a meeting with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Trump attacked the judge in sharp terms, surprising his fellow Republicans.
“He’s probably going to end up being a liberal like the rest of them,” Trump told the Republican leaders, according to a person with knowledge of the comments. “You never know with these guys.”
The Consequences of Trump Being Trump
Many are unmoved by incidents such as the ill-timed “Pocahontas” crack or even the anti-Muslim retweets, because they see the anger over these incidents as an expression of either political correctness or a desire on the part of the media and the Left to silence worries about Islamist extremism.
.. most in the GOP to treat the president’s faults as an acceptable price to pay for putting Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, along with the reversal of many Obama policies and victory over ISIS.
.. Nor has he been able to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to establish an aura of competence or a sense that the country is in good hands. To the contrary, the tweets and the gaffes have fed a narrative that Trump is out of control.
.. With each such absurdity, Trump chips away not only at his own stature but also at the ability of his party to unite Republicans or to win independents and centrist Democrats.
.. The assumption that a Trump presidency could consolidate or expand Republican control of Congress — the necessary predicate for any of the policies or changes that conservatives claim to want to implement — is being undermined primarily by Trump, not the criticisms of his opponents. Each episode of Trump behaving poorly and demonstrating bad judgment — such as the tweets that can be interpreted as an embrace of a conflict with all Muslims rather than just Islamists — obscures his achievements and reinforces the image of his administration as a circus.
.. Trump is providing an otherwise leaderless and intellectually bankrupt Democratic party with exactly what it lacked in 2016: the ability to mobilize its base of minorities and educated whites by giving them a reason to turn out in the kind of numbers they failed to do for Hillary Clinton.
.. If Trump continues to be Trump, and there’s no sign he can be reined in, Republicans are bound to pay a price for it.
Gorsuch’s speeches raise questions of independence, critics say
Last week found McConnell (R-Ky.) and Gorsuch traveling the Bluegrass State together for a tour of the senator’s alma maters.
.. Critics likened it to a “victory lap” for McConnell and said it amplified questions that were already being asked about Gorsuch’s independence from the Republicans
.. Trump and Republican leaders have celebrated Gorsuch’s confirmation as perhaps the signature accomplishment of the new administration
.. he has accepted an invitation to speak to a conservative legal scholarship group Thursday at Trump International Hotel in Washington.
.. But Gorsuch’s detractors see the speeches as hand-delivered thank-you notes, undermining attempts to present himself as an independent-minded justice.
“All of this indicates that he’s just ethically tone-deaf,” said Deborah L. Rhode
.. “Whether or not this breaks any explicit ethics rules, it is certainly not the behavior you’d expect from someone trying to ensure the appearance and reality of judicial independence and impartiality,”
.. “Chief Justice [John] Roberts likes to say that there aren’t Democratic or Republican justices. Gorsuch traveling around with the Republican Senate majority leader in what seems to be a sort of victory lap appears disturbingly out of step with the chief’s sentiment.”
.. The legislative muscle by McConnell and abundant praise from Trump is partly why Gorsuch’s appearances are seen through a partisan lens.
.. “One of my proudest moments was when I looked at Barack Obama in the eye and I said, ‘Mr. President, you will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy,’ ” McConnell told his constituents.
That left Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, hanging, and his chances ended with Trump’s election.
.. Facing calls to divest his business interests, Trump turned over management of the Trump Organization to his two oldest sons and vowed to reap no hotel profits during his presidency. But against the advice of top federal ethics officials, he has retained his ownership stake in the hotel, allowing him to eventually profit from the business.
.. “Is this any different from speeches and events Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg attends on a regular basis?” Adler asked in an interview with The Post, adding that Gorsuch’s schedule “might be a little unusual for a new justice, but I don’t think that’s out of order.”
Neil Gorsuch Speech at Trump Hotel Raises Ethical Questions
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, President Trump’s Supreme Court appointee, is scheduled to address a conservative group at the Trump International Hotel in Washington next month, less than two weeks before the court is set to hear arguments on Mr. Trump’s travel ban.
Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at New York University, questioned the justice’s decision to speak at the hotel, which is at issue in lower-court cases challenging the constitutionality of payments to Mr. Trump’s companies.
.. “It’s a terrible signal for this group to be holding their meeting at the Trump International Hotel and for a Supreme Court justice to legitimate it by attending,” she said. “It just violates basic ethical principles about conflicts of interest.”
.. Appearances by justices before groups with political leanings are not unusual. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, all members of the court’s liberal wing, have spoken before the American Constitution Society, a liberal group.
.. On the other hand, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., members of the court’s conservative wing, have addressed the Federalist Society, a conservative group.
There is very little crossover. “I could find no record of a sitting liberal Supreme Court justice addressing the Federalist Society annual meeting or a sitting conservative Supreme Court justice addressing the American Constitution Society annual meeting,” Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, wrote in a 2016 study.