President Donald Trump wrote in a late-night social media rant that Democrats are “PLAYING THE REF” when it comes to the Supreme Court, and warned the justices not to “fall for the games they play.”
The court heard oral arguments Thursday in a case challenging a temporary injunction that blocks the president’s executive order to end birthright citizenship from taking effect. The legal question at issue was whether federal judges could issue injunctions that are valid nationwide, instead of only in their districts.
But the legality of the executive order itself came up repeatedly during oral arguments, since overturning the injunction would mean letting the policy take effect in the meantime.
The justices questioned why the Trump administration only asked them to decide on the procedural issue despite losing repeatedly on the merits, how plaintiffs could get relief for a presumably illegal order without nationwide injunctions, and how the executive order would work in practice.
Trump responded by writing in a Truth Social post that, “The Radical Left SleazeBags, which has no cards remaining in its illegal bag of tricks, is, in a very coordinated manner, PLAYING THE REF with regards to the Supreme Court.”
“They lost the Election in a landslide, and with it, have totally lost their confidence and reason. They are stone cold CRAZY,” he continued. “I hope the Supreme Court doesn’t fall for the games they play. The people are with us in bigger numbers than ever before.”
The president has repeatedly used “playing the ref” as a catchall phrase to describe anyone who argues against his policy in court, criticizes his policies in general, criticizes a ruling he agrees with, or criticizes a judge he likes.
Last month, Trump said during a talk at the Department of Justice, “You know what playing the ref is? Like the great Bobby Knight basketball coach. He’d scream and scream at the ref. He’d scream,” in reference to the former Indiana University basketball coach who in 1985 famously threw a chair after a series of calls he disagreed with.
Knight “wanted to scare the hell” out of the refs just like “they”—whom he didn’t identify—“wanted to scare the hell out of judges,” Trump explained, after a nine-minute verbal ramble that covered Knight endorsing him, Afghanistan, Hamas, the price of eggs, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
“They” also treated the conservative Supreme Court justices “unbelievably badly,” Trump continued.
“They’re hoping that they can sway them to go along because again, what do they do?” he said.
His Truth Social post, however, seemed to imply that there would be trouble for the justices if they didn’t rule in the administration’s favor, given the part about the people being “with us in bigger numbers than ever before.”
The facts do not appear to bear this out. Trump beat former Vice President Kamala Harris by 1.5 percent of the vote in his “landslide” victory of 2024, while former President Joe Biden beat Trump by 4.4 percent in 2020.
Trump also received a record-low approval rating for his first 100 days back in office.
Furthermore, 56 percent of adults disapprove of Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, according to the Pew Research Center.
“They want to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Trump wrote.
The post Trump Sends Thinly Veiled Warning to Supreme Court Justices appeared first on The Daily Beast.
