TRUMP GETS PERSONAL OVER TARIFFS

JUSTICES ACCUSED OF 'DISLOYALTY TO COUNTRY'

- STORY: JEFF MASON / BLOOMBERG

President Donald Trump took the Supreme Court's tariffs ruling personally, and he made it personal in response. The president made clear on Friday he did not appreciate that two of the justices he nominated sided against him on his signature economic policy — and did so in extraordinarily direct, personal terms.

“I think it’s an embarrassment to their families,” Mr Trump said of the decision by Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, who joined Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's three liberal members in the 6-3 ruling that said the president's global tariffs exceeded his authority.

The president also had harsh words for liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, labelling the trio a “disgrace to our nation.”

The president, a former New York businessman, is not one to hold back when he has strong opinions, and his use of coarse language in public discourse has been accepted, even welcomed, by his “Make America Great Again” political base.

On Friday he called the plaintiff who initiated the court challenge, a family-owned maker of educational toys, “sleaze bags.”

But his attack on the two jurists was particularly striking because of its personal nature and open disregard for the third branch of government that they represent.