White House Spokesman Admits Trump Does Not Feel He Is ‘Beholden’ to America’s Courts

White House Spokesman Admits Trump Does Not Feel He Is ‘Beholden’ to America’s Courts

Finally, someone from the Trump White House has admitted outright that the president is not down with that part of the Constitution ordering him to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” That should save us all some time.

Hogan Gidley is the one who turned this subtext into text, during a conversation with Bill Hemmer on Friday’s edition of America’s Newsroom on Fox.

Hemmer had asked Gidley, a deputy press secretary at the White House, about the president’s new strategy for getting around the Supreme Court’s ruling that the administration can’t put a question about citizenship on the 2020 census form. Gidley turned it into a complaint about judges not letting Donald Trump do whatever he wants:

“The courts held things up. They’ve done that from the beginning of this administration.”

Complaining about judicial review seems about right for Donald Trump.

A minute later, Gidley came to the meat of his complaint:

“The Supreme Court even ruled this question could be on there, but it was impossible to get it on in time for printing. We looked at inserts, we looked at all types of options. Then the president said, listen, I’m not going to be beholden to courts anymore.”

The Supreme Court did not in fact rule that the citizenship question could be on the census. It ruled that the administration’s rationale for adding it was so transparently bogus and contrived that even Chief Justice John Roberts could not look the other way.

But the real meat there is Gidley saying the president decided he’s no longer “beholden” to the courts. That seems like something a presidential spokesman would not want to admit.

Watch the clip above, via Fox News.

Gary Legum

Gary Legum has written about politics and culture for Independent Journal Review, Salon, The Daily Beast, Wonkette, AlterNet and McSweeney's, among others. He currently lives in his native state of Virginia.

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