Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts “despises Donald Trump,” and therefore deliberately rules against the Trump administration.
During an interview this week, Cruz said Roberts, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, has pivoted away from championing conservative causes over the past few years because of his personal hatred for Trump.
“I think it is personal,” Cruz said. “It is difficult to come up with two human beings more antithetical than John Roberts and Donald Trump, in every respect.”
Cruz isn’t the only conservative irritated with Roberts’s supposed vendetta.
Vice President Mike Pence said last month that Roberts has been a “disappointment” to conservative voters.
He noted that the warning signs began even early in the Obama administration, when Roberts cast the deciding vote in favor of the controversial Affordable Care Act, going out of his way to reinterpret the intent of Congress by declaring the individual mandate a ‘tax.’
“Look, we have great respect for the institution of the Supreme Court of the United States,” Pence told the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody on Wednesday.
“But Chief Justice John Roberts has been a disappointment to conservatives—whether it be the Obamacare decision, or whether it be a spate of recent decisions all the way through Calvary Chapel.”
In the latter case, Pence was referencing a decision in which Roberts joined his liberal colleagues in rejecting a Nevada church’s request to block the state’s cap on attendees for religious services amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Roberts’s turn away from conservatism should serve as a reminder “of just how important this election is for the future of the Supreme Court,” Pence added.
“We remember the issue back in 2016, which I believe loomed large in voters’ decisions between Hillary Clinton and the man who would become president of the United States,” he said. “And some people thought that it wouldn’t be as big an issue these days. But I think that’s all changed.”
Roberts has ruled against the Trump administration a number of times, most recently in the Supreme Court’s recent case on DACA, which prompted Trump to joke that it is obvious the bench “doesn’t like” him.
Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020
