(USA Features) Former President Donald Trump on Monday expressed dismay with two of his Supreme Court picks after they both ruled in favor of keeping an Obama-era healthcare reform law intact.
Trump’s comments regarding Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett come after the nation’s highest court ruled last week that states lack standing to challenge the constitutionality of the law widely known as “Obamacare.”
“Disappointed and that’s the way it goes, very disappointed,” Trump said during an interview on Real America’s Voice.
“I fought very hard for them. But I was very disappointed with a number of their rulings,” the former president added.
Kavanaugh and Barrett joined five other justices in striking down states’ challenge to the law.
Asked if he is second-guessing his nomination of both justices, Trump dismissed the notion.
“Second-guessing does no good, but I was disappointed with a number of rulings that they made,” he said.
On the Obamacare question, Trump’s first Supreme Court pick, Justice Neil Gorsuch, sided with Justice Samuel Alito in favor of allowing the state challenges.
After the court’s ruling, Republican-led states that challenged the law say justices ignored key questions about the validity of the law, which was essentially gutted in 2017.
The Republican-led tax reform bill Trump signed in December of that year contained a provision striking down the Obamacare insurance requirement mandate, which essentially neutered the law.
The law, known officially as the Affordable Care Act, was passed in 2010. It has survived a number of court challenges, with the high court ruling in 2012 that the mandate was actually a tax and therefore constitutionally within Congress’ authority to impose.
In that first case, Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the decision, was accused of essentially creating the tax argument out of thin air. That ruling was 5-4 in favor of keeping the law intact.