# The Trump appointees to the Court

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "The Trump appointees to the Court," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-trump-appointees-to-the-court/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's assessment that Donald Trump's Supreme Court appointees have been surprisingly good, and that the justices he regards as disasters — Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — were appointed by more moderate presidents.*

- **Trump appointees:** "Pretty good"; "surprisingly good"
- **Named as disasters:** Samuel Alito; Clarence Thomas
- **His characterisation of them:** "These dinosaurs"
- **Appointing presidents:** "The moderate presidents"

Discussing the February 2026 State of the Union address, at which [Donald Trump](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/donald-trump) insulted the Supreme Court from the podium and said he would continue to ignore its decisions, [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/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."*[1]

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."*[1] [Ted Rall](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/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](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/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](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)
- [Donald Trump](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/donald-trump)
- [Barack Obama](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/barack-obama)
- [Ted Rall](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/ted-rall)

## Sources

1. SOTU: A Complete Disaster (2026-02-26), at 06:45. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My6xUH_kOwo&t=405s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-26-deprogram-ted-rall-sotu-a-complete-disaster/

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