The Trump appointees to the Court
=================================

Discussing the February 2026 State of the Union address, at which Donald Trump insulted the Supreme Court from the podium and said he would continue to ignore its decisions, John Kiriakou interrupted his co-host to enter a dissent that cut against the run of the conversation.

The assessment

"Interestingly, the Trump appointees to the Supreme Court have been pretty good," he said. "They've been surprisingly good."

The justices he singled out for the opposite verdict were not Trump's. "It's these dinosaurs like Alito and Thomas, appointed by the moderate presidents, that are just disasters." Ted Rall accepted the point, calling it interesting and thanking him for the observation.

Why the remark is unusual

Kiriakou is a sustained critic of the president on nearly every other axis, and the passage in which the compliment appears is otherwise hostile: he and Rall had just described the humiliation of Chief Justice Roberts, present in the chamber to be insulted, as the kind of thing Saddam Hussein used to do, and as a direct constitutional challenge that ought to have prompted the justices to get up and leave.

The compliment is also unqualified by any list of decisions. Kiriakou does not name a ruling that impressed him or a case in which a Trump appointee broke the expected way; the judgement is offered as a summary impression and left there.

The pattern it fits

He has made structurally similar arguments about his own case, which he attributes to Barack Obama, John Brennan and Eric Holder rather than to Republicans, and which he cites as a reason to expect fairer treatment on a pardon application from the right than from the left. The Supreme Court remark belongs to the same habit of assigning credit and blame by conduct rather than by party, and of noting, when it happens, that the expected alignment has failed.

See also

See also

- John Kiriakou
- Donald Trump
- Barack Obama
- Ted Rall
