Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans spent the weekend openly attacking the federal judiciary and, by extension, the Constitution’s separation of powers.
Elon Musk took the first shot early Sunday morning with an X post, angrily reacting to a federal judge blocking his“Department of Government Efficiency” from accessing Treasury Department records.
“A corrupt judge protecting corruption. He needs to be impeached NOW!” Musk posted.
Later, JD Vance chimed in with his own attack on the federal judiciary.
“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Vance posted.
Trump initially feigned ignorance when a reporter aboard Air Force One asked him about Vance’s statements later in the day, even attacking the journalist’s media outlet.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Neither do you,” Trump said, asking the reporter who he was with. When the reporter replied “HuffPost, Sir,” Trump replied, “Oh, no wonder. I thought they died.”
Trump gave a more complete answer to another reporter.
“We’re very disappointed with the judges that would make such a ruling. But we have a long way to go. We have to look, we have to find all of the fraud that’s going on. We have tremendous fraud, tremendous waste, and tremendous abuse, and theft, by the way,” Trump said. “And the day you’re not allowed to look for theft and fraud, et cetera, then we don’t have much of a country. So, no judge should frankly be allowed to make that kind of a decision. It’s a disgrace.”
These reactions are very worrying for the constitutional framework of the United States, where the separation of powers is supposed to provide a check from the judicial branch, represented by the courts, against the executive branch of the president and vice president. A billionaire oligarch like Musk is not supposed to have authority in the federal government, even if he is the world’s richest man, who funded the president’s campaign to the tune of $250 million.
Trump and Vance are floating the idea of ignoring federal court rulings against them, which would create a constitutional crisis in the United States. The conservative Supreme Court may not even step in to defend the separation of powers, and they’ve already granted Trump near-immunity. The Republican-led Congress will never even consider impeaching the president, either. What is to be done?
