Yesterday, Chief Justice Roberts took the nearly-unprecedented step of issuing a statement in which he rather meekly noted the obvious, that disagreement with a judicial order is not properly the subject of impeachment – only appeals. The Chief, a guy who interprets the Constitution and statutes for a living, was probably referencing that fairly clear portion of the Constitution that states that impeachments must be based on “High crimes and misdemeanors,” perhaps with a little “life tenure for good behavior” thrown in. Without further elaboration, Roberts’s statement read:
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
The standard is so obvious that one can legitimately question whether Roberts should have issued the statement at all. It is hard to imagine a world where it made anything better. Still – if he was going to put anything out, that’s about as mild as it gets. And it certainly seems self-evident that if one gets a ruling that is wrong, even egregiously wrong, there’s little reason to set up an appellate process if it’s preferred to just toss judges overboard. Ironically, Roberts’s statement is more out of the ordinary and without any sort of review. Be that as it may, let’s put everything in context. We are talking about the mild rebuff of the President’s statement in which Trump called the judge a radical left lunatic and accused him of being crooked. So there’s that:
President Trump asked me to do an online survey, and let Speaker Johnson @SpeakerJohnson hear people’s voices.
Should we impeach this far-left activist judge for their nonsense radical rulings?
Yes or No? pic.twitter.com/r936NNBViY
— Karoline Leavitt Daily News Sharing (@WHLeavitt) March 18, 2025
Enter Greg Gutfeld (He can be funny, if destructive), who leapt in last night to not so helpfully tell Roberts to “Shut the fck up” – something that may or may not be just as well directed at any number of people, Gutfeld being just one. From a report in JoeMyGod:
“Maybe a guy in a robe in DC can follow all the protocols, but Trump is the f-ing president of the United States who protects 300 million plus people. He is a leader who does not have the luxury of opening up his little books to read ‘Oh, my god, maybe he didn’t do it the right way.’
Yeah. A few things. First, pro-tip, there is very seldom much to be gained by telling a judge of any type to “shut the fck up” – never mind one of final review over everything. Also, it was actually Roberts that deviated from “protocols” (If one wipes aside a president calling a judge a lunatic). And there is the fact that these “protocols” are actually Constitutional provisions which heretofore were considered a bit more compelling than polite behavior. Protocol and expectations fell off an escalator in 2015:
“Roberts, shut the F up. This is something that a president has to do. He has to do this. It blows my mind how wrong I was in 2016, or 2015, when Trump came down the escalator and I was like ‘I can’t believe he said these things.’
“Everything he said was right. They are sending bad people. They’re sending bad people. What did he say? ‘They’re sending killers and rapists.’ Do you remember this?”
Wow – let’s “unpack this” as the kool kidz say. There remains the outside chance that Gutfeld was right in 2015 (He got the year wrong but that’s fine) over being shocked as to what a proto-president may or may not say. He may have really been shocked if he could’ve pictured himself just ten years later going on air to tell the Chief Justice to “Shut the fck up” – maybe. Furthermore, Trump didn’t actually say “killers,” this was 2015 when he had some restraint. Additionally, technically – no one is “sending” anyone. Immigrants bring themselves, unforced, across borders. Last, if anyone is actively doing anything, many of our employers are all but inviting undocumented labor over by providing the jobs – jobs that pay very little, normally under bad working conditions, the type that keep American prices down and profits up. It is a little tough to hear a lot of whining about the situation when it is corporate America that bears as much responsibility as anyone for undocumented immigration and labor, especially as it comes from Latin America, and Americans generally who derive a big benefit.
Now, there is no doubt that the polls indicate that Americans elected Trump because they wanted the border tightened up – even if the numbers were a bit weird and the problem exaggerated for political benefit, the polls were clear. So it’s unsurprising and not “wrong” in any legal sense that Trump would want to get aggressive in terms of deportation. The problems arise from the fact that there are so many well-established tools by which one deports people such that the Trump administration didn’t need to rush an overnight delivery of Venezuelans to El Salvador, never mind practically ignore a judicial order with the plane in the air. The judge who issued the stay was most certainly not saying that the administration couldn’t deport these people. He only questioned the legality of the means – and even that wasn’t a final order. Castigating the judge as “against” Trump and “for” illegal gang members from Venezuela” purposefully puts the whole system at risk.
Indeed, the ones in black robes who enforce those “protocols” also protect the American people to ensure that the government doesn’t wrongly deport Americans in rushed procedures. Most Americans aren’t at risk for a mistaken “round up” but some certainly are. It may sound quaint but judges protect basic civil rights from what’s been termed as “the tyranny of the majority” as just one element of their job, and any Trump supporter who argues against such will have to put up with the majority of Massachusetts or California establishing strict gun control in a way that a judge says violates the 2nd Amendment. Moreover, judges also asserted their authority over President Obama and his moves on DACA – and Obama was elected by a greater number of voters than Trump.
Almost all of this is actually politics as usual. The outliers include the use of the single most extreme measure to deport people (the Alien Enemies Act, which had been only used in time of war), calling for the impeachment of radical lunatic judges, having Roberts address the issue outside a SCOTUS ruling, and Gutfeld telling the Chief Justice to “Shut the fck up” on the most-watched cable network. Other than that this is all normal.
It would be interesting to invite Gutfeld circa 2015 to enter a time machine and look at himself calling himself wrong. The two Gutfelds probably fight, leading to the arrest of both and a judge to sort it out. All that’s left now is Roberts issuing a six word statement, “Gutfeld – Shut the fck up. Please.” The “please” would likely be found to be within the bounds of “Good behavior”… At least in 2025.
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I hope Roberts slaps Gutfield down. “Do NOT tell me to shut the fck up”. I doubt it will even come close to happening, but I can dream, right?
Who is this Gutfeld asshole? All he’s doing is spouting the party line. They have no case.