John Roberts Has Always Been In Trump’s Corner

This week’s joint address to Congress allowed President Donald Trump to do two of his favorite things: regurgitate racist tropes about immigrants on TV, and then work the red carpet afterwards, soaking in hearty congratulations and exchanging firm handshakes. Among the dignitaries Trump encountered was Chief Justice John Roberts, who attended as part of a Supreme Court delegation that included Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Anthony Kennedy. After a brief exchange of stern pleasantries with Kagan, Trump grew considerably more enthusiastic when he clocked the friendly face waiting in line to greet him next.

“Thank you again,” Trump said to Roberts, deploying the same little finger-point that basketball players use to acknowledge a teammate whose sweet bounce pass led to an easy layup. “Thank you again,” he said a second time before clapping Roberts on the arm, a time-honored instinctive gesture for a certain type of man who is fumbling for a way to express fondness for his peers, but still considers hugging beyond the pale. As Trump turned away from Roberts, he offered one last promise, in the knowing cadence of someone who just found out he’d be getting off with a verbal warning in lieu of a speeding ticket: “I won’t forget,” he said.

Trump did not specify what Roberts did to merit this display of gratitude, or otherwise allude to when he’d expressed this sentiment to Roberts previously. He also didn’t really have to, though, because John Roberts has spent his entire career paving the way for Trump’s ascent, hoping to facilitate the election of a Republican president who could deliver a reliable Supreme Court conservative majority. At the moments when Trump’s political future was in the greatest danger, the Roberts Court came galloping to his rescue every single time. 

As a result, the president is now treating the chief justice as he would anyone else with whom he’s forged a lengthy, mutually beneficial professional relationship. Whatever their occasional differences, Trump knows he is in Roberts’s debt, and knows it is good for business to reiterate his appreciation for Roberts’s forbearance whenever they enjoy a semi-private moment.

Most recently, Roberts authored the opinion in Trump v. United States, a case in which the six Republican justices effectively ended the ongoing criminal investigations into Trump, clearing the way for his election victory five months later. Although Roberts’s opinion does not literally place Trump forevermore beyond the law, Trump has interpreted it as such: In the weeks since he took office, his Department of Justice has cited the case extensively in court filings for the proposition that the Constitution grants him the unfettered authority to fire agency heads, ignore statutes passed by Congress, and otherwise do whatever he wants. 

Before that, Roberts was part of the narrow majority in Trump v. Anderson that declared that only an act of Congress could bar Trump from serving as president again, notwithstanding the Constitution’s explicit bar on insurrectionists holding public office that makes no mention of any requirement of a separate act of Congress. The result put to rest any lingering concerns about Trump’s eligibility, and gave the Republican Party the confidence to unify in support of his candidacy for a third time. The opinion in Anderson was unsigned, but The New York Times later reported that Roberts indeed wrote it. 

Although these cases are the Court’s most direct efforts to designate Trump as the Constitution’s special boy, Trump has more for which to thank Roberts than he probably realizes. Depending on your preferences, the Court’s most consequential pro-Trump decision is probably Shelby County v. Holder, a 2013 case in which Roberts gutted the Voting Rights Act on the grounds that a Black president’s election ended racism for good, or Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a 2010 case in which Roberts and the other Republican justices voted to safeguard Elon Musk’s right to spend a quarter-billion dollars to buy an election. If you are a true Roberts head who thinks, in light of current events, that I am underrating Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, in which the Republican justices laid the groundwork for the Trump-Musk administration’s bid to lay waste to the government and seize the powers of Congress for itself, sure, I am not going to argue too strenuously with you.

Supreme Court justices are under no obligation to attend presidential addresses, and in recent years many have taken to staying home and watching on TV. In 2010, Justice Clarence Thomas described State of the Union addresses as “so partisan” and thus “very uncomfortable” for judges, since they are expected to sit there stone-faced no matter what the speaker says about their work in front of a frenzied captive audience. Roberts’s misadventure is a pretty tidy illustration of the high-risk, no-upside nature of this decision: If you care about being perceived as a fair, impartial justice, you never know when a president cranked up on adrenaline will get a little too familiar in front of a hot mic.

I have written plenty about Roberts’s efforts to burnish the Court’s apolitical reputation, to which he frequently appeals in response to well-deserved criticism of the Court’s relentless efforts to push American politics to the right. I have also written plenty about the role of legal journalists, most of whom have John Roberts’s personal cell phone number, in promoting his preferred narrative, notwithstanding the fact that it immediately strikes anyone whose brain has not been poisoned by law school as weird and wrong. If Roberts hadn’t committed so thoroughly to the bit, declaring at his confirmation hearings that judges are “umpires” whose job is simply to “call balls and strikes,” this website would have a different name, and I would presumably get fewer confused emails from accidental readers wondering why I don’t cover Major League Baseball’s top pitching prospects more often than I do.

At this point, however, whether Roberts still believes that the Court is nonpartisan or simply wants to mask the partisan nature of his work is immaterial. If Roberts is really as committed an institutionalist as his admirers insist, Tuesday exposed him as the only remaining believer in this fairy tale. If Roberts is as cynical and savvy a politician as his critics contend, Trump made a spur-of-the-moment decision for both of them that under the circumstances—a Republican president, a Republican legislature, a Republican Supreme Court supermajority that might remain in power for a generation to come—they needn’t be so coy anymore. Their exchange was less an embarrassing slip-up than a candid acknowledgement of their respective triumphs: Neither man would be where he is today without the other’s support. As Trump said before they parted ways for the night, he won’t forget it. Neither will Roberts.