Vice President JD Vance called Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’s comment that the role of the judiciary branch is to check both the executive and legislative branches of government “profoundly wrong.”
Speaking with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, Vance was asked about court cases that have hampered the Trump administration’s deportation efforts.
“I saw an interview with Chief Justice Roberts recently where he said the role of the court is to check the excesses of the executive,” Vance said. “I thought that was a profoundly wrong sentiment.”
Chief Justice John Roberts said earlier this month that the high court’s role is to “check the excesses of Congress or the executive” as an independent and coequal branch of government.
Vance disagrees.
“That’s one-half of his job,” Vance said on Douthat’s podcast. “The other half of his job is to check the excesses of his own branch.”
When the voters elect immigration hawks but the courts don’t allow them to have what they voted for, Vance argues, something has gone wrong.
“I know this is inflammatory,” he said, “but I think you are seeing an effort by the courts to quite literally overturn the will of the American people.”
Courts have blocked several of President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants on due process grounds, slowing down his efforts to send thousands or even millions of migrants to their legal homes.
“We have an obligation to treat people humanely, but I do think that a lot of these illegal immigrants have to go back to where they came from,” Vance said.
In the interview, Vance claimed that former President Joe Biden was not calling the shots in his own administration, an increasingly mainstream view in Washington.
“Far be it from me to defend Joe Biden, but I really think the more that we learn, the more that we see the policy of the Biden administration was driven much more by staff than it was by the elected president.”
Vance and Douthat differed on estimates of the number of migrants who entered the U.S. during the Biden presidency. Douthat believes the number is around 10 million, and Vance guesses it’s twice that.
Either way, Vance defined success on the southern border as having the “infrastructure” that allows for a large number of deportations when large numbers of illegal immigrants enter the country.
In a separate interview, Vance denied he’s in a battle with Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the 2028 presidential nomination.
“I can just feel it — the media is going to start telling some story of me versus Marco or me having a rivalry with Marco,” Vance told NBC News.
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That isn’t the case, he insists, though Vance said he expects GOP challengers before securing the 2028 nod.
“My attitude is, if I do end up running in 2028, I’m not entitled to [the nomination],” Vance said. “I really think that Marco and I can get a lot done together over the next few years.”
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
