Trump, of All People, Says It ‘Should Be Illegal’ to Criticize Judges
Donald Trump, in his speech at the Department of Justice on Friday, said it “should be illegal” for people to criticize judges, adding that it “probably is illegal in some form.”
It’s not the first time the president has expressed this sentiment — on the campaign trail last year, Trump said people “should be put in jail” for criticizing the conservative justices on the Supreme Court.
Trump has, of course, consistently attacked the judges who presided over his criminal and civil cases. His comments Friday came just hours after his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, stood outside the White House and attacked a judge who ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration had illegally fired thousands of probationary employees in a “sham” operation to circumvent employment laws.
“You cannot have a low-level district court judge filing an injunction to usurp the executive authority of the president of the United States, that is completely absurd,” Leavitt said, adding that “all of these injunctions have always been unconstitutional and unfair.”
She asserted that “as the executive of the executive branch, the president has the ability to fire or hire,” further complaining about “these lower-level judges who are trying to block this president’s agenda.”
In recent weeks, as Trump and his top donor and advisor Elon Musk have torn through the federal government in a reckless, unilateral manner, some federal judges have stepped in to try to put a halt to their destruction. The administration’s response hasn’t been to accept the rulings and orders, or scale back its assault on the balance of power that has held the government together for centuries — but rather to repeatedly demand the conservative Supreme Court’s assistance, and relentlessly attack the judges while claiming Trump should be able to decree whatever he wishes without oversight.
“Lawless judicial tyranny,” Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, wrote on X this week after a judge halted Trump’s move to punish a law firm that represented Democrats during the 2020 election. “Judges have no authority to force the executive branch to provide classified secrets to Democrat activist law firms.
“Under the precedents now being established by radical rogue judges, a district court in Hawaii could enjoin troop movements in Iraq,” Miller wrote a few hours later. “Judges have no authority to administer the executive branch. Or to nullify the results of a national election. We either have democracy, or not.”
Musk — whose work leading Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has led to several legal challenges — has also argued that “democracy” means letting Trump do whatever he wants. “If the will of the president is not implemented and the president is representative of the people, that means the will of the people is not being implemented, and that means we don’t live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy,” he told Sean Hannity last month.
“The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges,” Musk wrote on X a week after his comments to Hannity. No one is above the law, including judges.” He has continued to regularly rail against the judges blocking Trump’s orders to his 220 million X followers — including on Friday when he shared a story from a right-wing satire site about a judge naming himself president. “Seriously, this is essentially what’s happening!!” Musk added.
Vice President J.D. Vance agrees. “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” he wrote last month. “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.”
So does Attorney General Pam Bondi. “You got one district judge thinking he can control the money for the entire country,” the head of the Justice Department said on Fox Business last week. “They think they control everything and they don’t, and that is why we are going after them every step of the way. The Justice Department will fight back. … It is the president of the United States’ decision who to hire, who to fire, where money goes — not these career bureaucrats.”
Republican lawmakers have already introduced efforts to impeach two judges for ruling against the Trump administration.
Trump, for his part, has threatened to “look at” judges who rule against DOGE’s efforts to gut federal agencies and freeze their funds.
It’s hardly an idle threat — Trump viciously attacked the judge overseeing his criminal prosecution in the New York hush money trial. He went after the judge’s daughter multiple times, for having worked at a Democratic consulting firm, until the judge instituted a gag order — which Trump said was “not fair.”
Trump also routinely slammed the judge overseeing his New York civil trials — calling him a “bully” and a “terrible, biased, irrationally angry Clinton-appointed judge.”
Somehow, on Friday, Trump decided to call out Democrats and the media for saying “horrible things” about judges who had ruled in his favor, characterizing it as “truly interference.”
“They wanted to scare the hell out of the judges. And they do it,” he said. “And how do you stop it if you’re a judge? Because you want to go home, you have a family, you have children, and The New York Times will write whatever these people say.”
