Trump Says He Regrets His Three Supreme Court Picks After Recent Rulings

President Donald Trump has now explicitly said he regrets nominating Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, criticizing the three justices for ruling against him on several major issues.

The comment came in a TIME interview conducted September 28 and published October 1, 2026. Trump was asked directly whether he regretted selecting the three justices during his first presidency.

“Yeah. Yeah,” Trump answered, according to the interview transcript. He added that the justices had voted against him “too often” despite receiving lifetime appointments.

 

 

 

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The three justices were all nominated by Trump during his first term. Gorsuch joined the Court in 2017, Kavanaugh in 2018 and Barrett in 2020. Their appointments helped produce the Court's current 6–3 conservative majority.

Trump's frustration is particularly connected to rulings that have blocked or limited parts of his second-term agenda. Among the cases he has highlighted are disputes over tariffs, birthright citizenship and voting rules.

In February 2026, the Supreme Court ruled against Trump's use of emergency economic powers to impose his sweeping global tariffs. Gorsuch and Barrett were among the justices in the majority in that 6–3 decision.

Trump subsequently criticized Gorsuch and Barrett publicly, saying their decision was a serious mistake. At the time, however, when asked whether he regretted nominating them, he declined to give a direct answer.

 

 

 

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His position changed in the TIME interview. Asked again about the three appointments, Trump said he regretted them because they had not consistently supported his administration's position.

Trump also discussed the concept of judicial loyalty. When asked whether he wanted loyalty from Supreme Court justices, he initially said he liked loyalty, but then clarified: “No, I don't want loyalty. I want good decisions.”

That distinction is important because Supreme Court justices have lifetime appointments and are constitutionally independent from the president who nominated them. A president can nominate a justice, but cannot direct how that justice votes once confirmed.

The Court's record also shows that Trump's three appointees have not simply voted as a unified bloc. Their positions can differ from one another and from the administration depending on the legal question before the Court.

For example, the Court's official records show cases in which Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett have joined opinions with both conservative and liberal colleagues. Their voting patterns therefore cannot be reduced to automatic support for Trump.

 

 

 

Trump has also complained that the three justices are behaving differently from what he expected when he interviewed them as potential nominees.

In a Truth Social post discussed by Reuters, Trump wrote that the justices were not the people he had interviewed and accused them of having changed after reaching the Court.

His comments reflect a broader disagreement over what a president should expect from judges he appoints. Trump has emphasized the importance of judicial outcomes to his administration, while the constitutional structure gives federal judges substantial independence from presidential control.

The disagreement is particularly notable because Trump's three appointments substantially changed the ideological composition of the Supreme Court. The Court moved from a 5–4 conservative alignment to a 6–3 conservative majority after Barrett replaced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020.

 

 

 

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The three justices have nevertheless participated in numerous decisions consistent with conservative legal positions, including important cases involving abortion, administrative authority, gun rights and other constitutional questions. Their occasional disagreements with Trump do not mean that their overall judicial records have ceased to reflect conservative jurisprudence.

Trump's latest remarks therefore concern his relationship with particular rulings and expectations rather than an announcement that he can remove the justices. Supreme Court justices serve during “good Behaviour” under Article III, and a president does not have authority simply to dismiss a justice because of disagreement with decisions.

The comments also come as the Court considers disputes involving Trump's policies during his second administration, making judicial independence an increasingly visible issue in Washington.

The viral image accompanying the claim is consequently based on a real and very recent statement. Unlike many social-media graphics, the central quotation is not fabricated: Trump did say that he regretted nominating Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett.

What the graphic leaves out is the reason for that regret. Trump specifically tied it to the frequency with which the three justices have ruled against him, rather than saying that their entire judicial records were failures.

 

 

 

The episode also illustrates why presidential appointments to the Supreme Court can produce outcomes that differ from the expectations of the president who made them. Once confirmed, justices decide individual cases based on the legal questions presented to the Court rather than serving as members of a presidential administration.

For Trump, however, the recent rulings have produced an unusually direct public expression of disappointment with three judges whose appointments were among the most consequential decisions of his first presidency.