President Trump says he regrets nominating Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett, arguing the justices voted against him too often and cost the country dearly.
Breitbart News reported that in a TIME interview published Thursday, President Donald Trump said he regrets all three Supreme Court justices he placed on the bench in his first term, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Trump tied the regret to votes and rulings that cut against key pieces of his agenda on tariffs, birthright citizenship and election rules. He said the problem was not personal. He said it hurt the country.
Asked whether he regretted the nominations, Trump answered without hesitation.
"Yeah. Yeah. What can I do? I put them in,"
he said. He followed with a sharper charge about the record since those lifetime seats were filled.
"They voted against me too often. I was very, I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often. They vote for me too."
Just the News reported the same frustration and noted that Trump has repeatedly criticized the Court when major cases have not gone his way, including the birthright citizenship fight under the 14th Amendment.
One flashpoint was the February decision that struck down Trump’s global tariffs. Trump said the Court turned a policy tool into a “corrupt business” and refused a simple fix on refunds.
"It’s unfortunate what they did, not to me, to our country,"
he said. On the money at stake, he argued the justices could have limited the damage.
"All they had to do was a little clause saying any money paid does not have to be paid back...would have saved $400 billion. They chose not to save that."
The New York Post reported that on Feb. 20 the Court held Trump could not use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a 1977 law that lets a president restrict economic transactions in a national emergency, for sweeping tariffs. Gorsuch and Barrett joined the majority against him. IEEPA tariffs had already collected $133 billion in fiscal years 2025 and 2026 before that ruling, and the decision did not settle whether refunds were required.
Trump did not hide his anger at those two votes. “Not that it matters, doesn’t matter at all, but two of the people that voted for that I appointed, and they sicken me,” he said of Gorsuch and Barrett. “They sicken me ’cause they are bad for our country.” At a fundraiser he added that bad courts were costing the country “hundreds of billions of dollars.” After the loss, his team shifted toward narrower authorities, including Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 and Section 301 investigations.
That clash sits alongside other high-stakes fights still moving through the same Court, including a Trump administration request to restrict inmate sex-change procedures in federal prisons.
In June, the Court found Trump’s order restricting birthright citizenship unlawful. Barrett and Kavanaugh were in the majority. Gorsuch dissented. Trump has condemned that outcome in strong terms as a misreading of national authority over citizenship.
In September, the Court declined to let a Postal Service directive restrict mail-in ballots ahead of the midterms. Trump called it “another bad decision” from a Court he said had been “bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left.” On Truth Social he went further about the jurists he once interviewed for the jobs.
"These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves,"
he wrote. The TIME remarks came weeks after that September blast.
Election-integrity cases remain a live front. The same Court recently allowed Trump’s DHS to scrub illegal immigrants from voter rolls, a reminder that outcomes still cut both ways depending on the dispute.
Trump’s TIME answers on loyalty were blunt, then he corrected course in the same breath. RealClearPolitics highlighted his emphasis on loyalty as a quality he wants in nominees, alongside the regret over the three he already seated.
"I do like loyalty, yeah,"
he said, before drawing a different line.
"No, I don’t want loyalty. I want good decisions."
The Washington Examiner reported that Trump also tore into Gorsuch and Barrett over the tariff vote during a rare White House press briefing appearance on a Friday, when he was asked directly whether he regretted those nominations. He called the tariff vote an embarrassment.
Just the News noted the fuller conservative ledger as well. The three Trump appointees have delivered major wins on abortion, affirmative action, gun rights and administrative authority, even as they have treated some of his newer executive moves with skepticism. Trump himself said they vote for him too. The public fight is about the losses he says the country cannot afford.
Those mixed results land in a term already crowded with emergency applications and deportation fights, including when the Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump third-country deportations pending full review.
Trump put Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett on the Court between 2017 and 2020. Those seats were sold to voters as a generation-long correction after years of liberal judicial activism. Lifetime tenure was the point. It was also the constraint. Once confirmed, the justices do not answer to the president who nominated them.
That structural fact is why Trump’s “what can I do” line matters. He is not threatening removals he cannot make. He is judging performance on the cases that defined his economic, immigration and election agenda, and saying the nominations failed that test too often.
Democrats, for their part, still talk about changing the Court itself when they hold power, a project laid out as they eye a Supreme Court overhaul if the party retakes Washington. Trump’s complaint is different. He wants the justices he already confirmed to stop blocking tools he says the country needs on trade, borders and ballots.
Redistricting and map fights keep feeding the same docket, as when Missouri took its redistricting fight to the Supreme Court seeking emergency restoration of a GOP-drawn map. Personnel is policy until the robes go on. After that, the votes are the record.
Trump gave three justices the job of a lifetime. He is now saying too many of their votes left America weaker on the issues he was elected to fix, and voters can judge that record the same way he has.