bitchy | Donald Trump threw a rattled, unhinged tantrum after SCOTUS struck down his tariffs

On Friday, the conservative-activist Supreme Court made a rare move to rein in Donald Trump. Too little, too fascist! SCOTUS ruled in a 6-to-3 decision that Trump has no authority to levy tariffs without oversight or congressional approval. The ruling effectively struck down Trump’s dumbass tariffs, tariffs which few people have even bothered to keep track of because Trump Always Chickens Out (TACO). Every level of this is effectively busywork from all sides – Trump is going to do what he wants, SCOTUS has no authority over the fascist they empowered, and Congressional Republicans are going to continue to sit back and do nothing. Still, the decision rattled Trump. He came out for a press conference and he was clearly shaky, panicked and demented. Over the course of 24 hours, he announced an across-the-board 10% tariff on all imports, then upped it to 15%.

A Supreme Court decision on Friday striking down President Trump’s sweeping global tariffs dealt a major blow to his economic agenda and brought new uncertainty to global markets struggling to adapt to his whipsawing trade policies that was compounded when he announced that he was imposing a new across-the-board 10 percent tariff.

The court, in a 6-to-3 decision written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., ruled that Mr. Trump had exceeded his authority when he imposed tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner last year. The ruling prompted a defiant response from the president: In a news conference at the White House, Mr. Trump excoriated the justices who had ruled against him as “fools and lap dogs” and foreshadowed the new tariffs he announced within hours, to begin on Tuesday.

The court’s ruling threw into doubt a series of trade deals with countries around the world that the administration struck in recent months, and left unclear whether U.S. companies or consumers would be able to reclaim some of the more than $200 billion in fees the federal government has collected since the start of last year. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh warned in a dissent that any refund process could be a substantial “mess.”

The ruling also appeared to create a trillion-dollar hole in the federal budget because the tariffs that were upended had helped fill the gap caused by his income tax cut.

Mr. Trump was the first president to claim that the 1977 IEEPA emergency statute, which does not mention the word “tariffs,” allowed him to unilaterally impose the duties without congressional approval. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that statute did not. The court’s ruling, backed by justices from across the ideological spectrum, was a rare and significant example of the Supreme Court pushing back on Mr. Trump’s agenda.

[From The NY Times]

One of the funniest – I guess?? – parts of this is that Trump is now at war with several conservative justices, including John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett. Brett Kavanaugh didn’t vote with the majority opinion, he’s still backing his sexual-predator benefactor. You know what would be hilarious? If Trump suddenly became a proponent of expanding the court, which is something Democrats have wanted for years (he actually riffed about this on Friday too). Anyway, Trump is trying to assume a vibe of “who gonna check me boo?” but it’s coming across as “unhinged temper tantrum,” which is interesting. If he’s this shaky about his bullsh-t tariffs, it doesn’t bode well for everything else, you know?

Trump: “I can do anything I want to do to them … I’m allowed to destroy the country.”

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) February 20, 2026 at 1:37 PM

Trump threatens us with a good time: “They’d like to pack the court. They want to put on 21 people. Pack the Supreme Court. Maybe they should do it. Maybe we would be better off if they did it.”

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) February 20, 2026 at 1:40 PM

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.