Trump’s Rage at SCOTUS Explodes—then Backfires as GOPers Turn on Him

THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

The New Republic

News, Politics

4.4 • 798 Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2026

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After the Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump’s tariffs, he detonated. He targeted justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, fuming that the ruling was an “embarrassment to their families.” He doubled down on the idea that he has unilateral tariff power. He tacitly threatened to investigate the high court for foreign influences. He called the ruling a “disgrace to our nation.” Yet this is backfiring: It prompted GOP Representative Don Bacon to declare that this might prompt more GOP votes to constrain him, remarking that Trump “didn’t do himself any favors.” Indeed, after we recorded this episode, Senator Mitch McConnell pointedly noted that Congress is “not an inconvenience to avoid,” suggesting more Congressional action ahead, and other Republicans celebrated the ruling. We talked to legal scholar Matthew Seligman, a lawyer for some of the businesses looking for tariff refunds. He explains why the ruling was such a major rebuke, why Trump's efforts to revive the tariffs might encounter turbulence, and how his impotent fury—and the GOP response to it—undermine his political mystique in a deeper sense. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.
0:16.4	I'm your host, Greg Sargent.
0:31.7	After the Supreme Court struck down his tariffs, Donald Trump flew into a rage.
0:37.1	He attacked and even tacitly threatened the conservative justices who voted against him, he vowed to
0:38.4	revive his tariffs using other authorities, and he declared that he has zero obligation to go to
0:44.1	Congress to do so. It's all supposed to sound very scary, yet this time around Trump really
0:50.8	looks like a floundering, diminished figure who's struggling to keep up the appearance
0:55.6	that he isn't afraid to wield dictatorial power. And yet there are signs it's already
1:01.2	backfiring as well with at least one Republican declaring that Trump's threats should prompt
1:06.4	the GOP Congress to take more of a stand against him on all this. We're talking about all this with Matthew Seligman, founder of Greyhawk Law and a legal scholar at Stanford,
1:16.5	who represents some of the businesses looking for tariff refunds after the decision.
1:21.0	Matt, good to have you on.
1:22.9	Good to be back.
1:24.6	So the Supreme Court invalidated all of the tariffs that Trump instituted using the
1:29.4	International Economic Emergency Powers Act or AEPA that knocks out a bunch of the tariffs on
1:35.2	China, Mexico and Canada, all the global reciprocal tariffs and a number of others. Matt,
1:41.1	can you explain exactly what the court ruled? Sure. This was a decisive ruling
1:47.4	against the president here. So the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or AEPA, grants the
1:55.3	the authority to, as relevant here, regulate importation if he declares an emergency and the action he takes
2:05.7	is designed to deal with a, quote, extraordinary and unusual threat. And what the court held
2:11.3	here is that regulate importation doesn't include the power to impose tariffs. And so all of the tariffs that were
2:19.9	instituted relying on AEPA are now wiped out. Yeah. So just to clarify, under the AEPA statute,
	...

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