Why Trump, US chief justice are at loggerheads

For two of the most powerful men in the United States, Donald Trump and John Roberts, it has been a delicate dance from the start.

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In 2015, the man who would become the chief executive of the United States assailed the integrity of its chief justice, calling Roberts "disgraceful" and "disappointing" — and, later, an "absolute disaster" — for earlier upholding the Affordable Care Act, the Obamacare law that Trump subsequently sought to repeal.

A little more than a year later on the US Capitol steps, Roberts, an enigmatic conservative Supreme Court justice from the American Midwest, swore in Trump, a brash businessman-turned-politician from New York City, as president. Any lingering tension had evaporated under smiles, handshakes and a backdrop of applause.

Since then, the dynamic between the two has remained complicated, marked by dramatic legal wins for Trump as well as painful losses, and punctuated by clashes between the two as Trump shattered norms by aggressively pushing his policies while brooking little dissent — including from the coequal branch of government that Roberts leads: the judiciary.