Today’s tantrum is aimed at Leonard Leo, the guy at the Federalist Society in charge of the project of putting right-wing judges in all our courts. This is from Politico:
President Donald Trump leveled unusually pointed criticism of a prominent conservative legal activist and organization Thursday as he railed against a ruling that struck down his sweeping tariffs.
The president, in a post on his social media platform, slammed Leonard Leo, the former chair of the Federalist Society, calling him a “sleazebag” who “probably hates America.”
It was a striking characterization of Leo, who played a key role in working with Trump to shape the conservative Supreme Court.
“He openly brags how he controls Judges, and even Justices of the United States Supreme Court — I hope that is not so, and don’t believe it is!,” Trump wrote.
Translation: Trump thinks he owns the entire Department of Justice and expects judges he appoints to be loyal to him, not to Leonard Leo.
Everything with Trump is transactional. And everything with Trump is personal. In his mind, his opponents don’t oppose him over principles but because they don’t like him. I don’t think he grasps the concept of principles. And if all these judges are saying that his genius tariff plans are unconstitutional, that must be because they don’t like him and Leonard Leo is incompetent. I don’t think he grasps the concept of “unconstitutional.” In his mind, if he wants to do something, it must be constitutional.
What’s worse, the big baby might not ever get his fancy plane from Qatar. This is from the Washington Post:
Despite claims by the Defense Department to the contrary, legal teams representing the U.S. and Qatari governments have not finalized an agreement for transferring the luxury Boeing 747-8 jetliner that President Donald Trump wants for Air Force One amid outstanding requests by Qatar for Washington to clarify the transaction’s terms, said officials familiar with the matter.
The plane from Qatar is currently in the United States, according to sources familiar with the matter as well as President Donald Trump, who confirmed the plane was here. However, Qatar wants to clarify the details surrounding the transfer, specifically emphasizing that the Trump administration was responsible for initiating the discussions about the donation of the luxury jet to the U.S. government, sources familiar with the negotiations said.
In brief, the Qataris want the world to know they didn’t initiate the offer to just give Trump a jet. Qatar wanted to sell the jet. Trump somehow steamrolled them into giving it to the Defense Department for his use. I also understand the Qataris want nothing to do with any future transfer of the jet to the Trump presidential library. And even if the Department of Defense does get full ownership of the jet, we still have the issue of how much time it will take and how much money it will cost to retrofit the jet for presidential use. The jet is a massive white elephant that may end up rusting away on a tarmac somewhere, unused. If Trump wants it, he can damn well spend the billions he’s making with his meme coin scam and buy the thing. And when he doesn’t get his “free” jet, watch him throw a tantrum at Qatar.
Back to the tariffs. In yesterday’s post I wrote about various laws passed by Congress in the past that he could still use to manipulate tariffs. The problem with all of them is that they all come with limits. Josh Marshall writes at Talking Points Memo that Trump’s not going to be happy with those limits.
There are a series of laws Congress has passed to give trade authority to presidents. But they tend to be focused on two things — protecting industries with a strong connection to national security and protection in response to unfair trade practices. Those are two areas in which Congress, not unreasonably, thought it might not be able to move with sufficient speed. Those laws require comment periods and investigations. They still give the President a lot of leeway to make “findings” of what threatens U.S. national security or constitutes unfair trade practices. But those criteria and processes and comment periods, even for this administration, significantly reduce the unilateral and willful authority Trump has used to go about all of this.
It’s not just a matter of easier or harder, quicker or slower. A huge amount of the drama of the last two months has been precisely the spectacle of Trump’s purportedly total and unchecked power. Trump can wake up one morning and totally upend the whole global economy. He can just tweet about 50% tariffs on Europe and well … now we’re up for a totally new drama.
Messing up the world’s economy gives Trump god-like power! He sees himself as an ancient jealous god who throws lighting bolts at mortals who piss him off and sends locusts and floods to torment people for his amusement.
These other laws work very differently. They tend not to apply to consumer goods. The cheap measuring cups you buy on Amazon have no impact on U.S. military capacity. They’re focused on things like steel production, high-end computers, uranium — again, things that the government can’t just leave to the market because control over them is required for military power and national security. If there are specific unfair trade practices, you need to say what they are. They need to be at least kind of real.
Assuming the SCOTUS doesn’t give Trump all his magic tariff powers back —
If it does stick, that means not only that Trump’s capacity to wage trade wars will be much more limited — though by no means ended. It also means the spectacle of his total power will be diminished as well. And that’s significant in a way that goes beyond the narrow confines of trade policy. I’d really urge you to focus almost as much on the curtailment of the spectacle of total power as the impact on trade policy itself.
So he may well use those other laws discussed yesterday to continue his trade wars, but it won’t be nearly as satisfying to his ego and he’s likely to lose interest and move on to some other outrage.
And then there’s Trump vs. Harvard. I haven’t been following all the twists and turns, but I understand at the moment Harvard is enjoying some court protection. But the all-out war on Harvard is utterly irrational on Trump’s part. This is not to say that no one could ever have reason to be miffed at Harvard over one thing or another, but Trump’s actions are outside all rational bounds. Trump’s antipathy to Harvard points to something personal to him, on some level, but I don’t know exactly what. There was a web rumor that Harvard rejected Barron, but the Trumps deny that.
Trump is also suddenly really pissed at China. The State Department is moving to revoke Chinese students’ visas. And Trump is screaming that China is in violation of some tariff deal, but he isn’t saying exactly how. There’s something going on with Chinese technology and advanced AI chips. Whatever it is, Trump is now having a tantrum at China after years of claiming he and Xi Jinping get along so well.
If I had any money, I’d pay some to find out what Trump’s blood pressure is these days.
Update: More on Trump’s tirade against Leonard Leo, from Greg Sargent at The New Republic:
I’d like to highlight something else in Trump’s tirade because it constitutes an actual argument on his part about his exercise of unilateral power on tariffs. Trump said this:
The horrific decision stated that I would have to get the approval of Congress for these Tariffs. In other words, hundreds of politicians would sit around D.C. for weeks, and even months, trying to come to a conclusion as to what to charge other Countries that are treating us unfairly. If allowed to stand, this would completely destroy Presidential Power—The Presidency would never be the same!
“Under this decision, Trillions of Dollars would be lost by our Country,” Trump fumed. “The President of the United States must be allowed to protect America against those that are doing it Economic and Financial harm.”
Here Trump derides the very idea that Congress should have a good deal of authority over the levying of tariffs. Trump claims this can’t apply in the case of his new tariffs because it prevents him from acting to protect the country in an emergency. In this case, that emergency is the one Trump has invoked—our trade deficits—to appropriate for himself virtually unlimited power to levy sweeping taxes on products imported from all over the world….
… Trump is openly declaring that he should have the power to circumvent Congress in levying these tariffs to address emergencies. Yet as Trump himself demonstrates here, in claiming this authority, he’s invoking an emergency that is not real. Trillions of dollars are not being “lost” by our country due to trade deficits, as his rant proclaims. That is not how trade deficits work, and they certainly do not constitute “emergencies.” As Trump’s tirade plainly shows, he made up the “emergency” to grant himself extraordinarily sweeping authorities.
Very fundamentally, Trump doesn’t understand separation of powers and how the federal government functions. And you really can’t call trade deficits an “emergency.” The last time the U.S. didn’t have trade deficits was 1970. We’ve been running deficits for 55 years.

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