Ingraham: Justices ‘Should Go Run for Office’ If They Want to Legislate

Although LifeZette Editor-in-Chief Laura Ingraham praised the unanimous Supreme Court decision to reinstate most of President Donald Trump’s travel ban executive order pending consideration of the case, she blasted the court for trying to “impart its own legislative authority,” during an interview Tuesday on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”

The court is set to make a final judgment on the case in the fall term. In the interim, the justices lifted a pair of injunctions on the executive order issued by lower courts — with one exception. They established an exemption for foreign nationals, attempting to enter the U.S. from ban countries, who have a “bona fide relationship with any person or entity in the United States.”

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Ingraham, who once clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, said “there is good news” for Trump and his national security agenda in the Supreme Court’s Monday decision, but ripped the exemption.

“Now, that’s just ridiculous. The Supreme Court tried to impart its own legislative authority, which it does not have under our Constitution, onto this Trump travel pause,” Ingraham said. “And so they just made that whole thing up, and now that’s going to be another hurdle for judges to clear when they have to consider exigent circumstances on the part of refugees or would-be travelers to the United States from those affected countries.”

“So that is not a win for the president on that specific outlined group of exceptions,” Ingraham added. “That’s exactly why we need justices on the Supreme Court who understand their role is circumscribed by our framers. They do not have the right to conceive of new legislative demands and put them on states, localities, or the federal government. That’s not how it works.”

Ingraham highlighted the “instructive” opinion Justice Thomas penned in conjunction with Trump’s nominee, Justice Neil Gorsuch, in which the two balked at the court’s “new exception” tacked onto Trump’s travel ban.

“If [the justices] want to be legislators, they should resign their positions and they should go run for office. But they’re justices on the Supreme Court,” Ingraham said. “I found that to be very disturbing. Because somebody has a relative in the United States does not override the president’s supreme executive authority under our Constitution to deter any national security concerns and address them as he sees fit.”

“So that sub-category they devised in the majority — that’s just wrong,” Ingraham added. “So, Justice Thomas — my old justice — and Justice Gorsuch are totally right on that. So the good news is that Justice Gorsuch seems to be just phenomenal so far.”

Ingraham also addressed Trump’s early morning Tuesday tweets hounding “fake news CNN” for being forced to retract a fraudulent story tying Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci to a Russian investment fund. Three CNN employees resigned over the scandal after the network released its apology. Author Thomas Frank, investigative editor Eric Lichtblau, and overseer Lex Haris left CNN.

“Wow, CNN had to retract big story on ‘Russia,’ with 3 employees forced to resign. What about all the other phony stories they do? FAKE NEWS!” Trump tweeted, following up with a tweet depicting a photoshopped image of CNN’s logo — FNN, or Fake News Network.

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After Ingraham’s interview, the president followed up with two other tweets.

“Fake News CNN is looking at big management changes now that they got caught falsely pushing their phony Russian stories. Ratings way down!” Trump added. “So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC? What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!”

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Ingraham said the episode vindicated the president.

“Remember all the journalists who continuously berate the president for raising the issue of fake news? They do it all the time. ‘How dare he speak out against what these vaunted journalists are doing?'” Ingraham said. “Turns out, they were behind a story that was fraudulent and defamatory.”

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“I don’t know why Scaramucci is deciding not to file a lawsuit against CNN. Maybe he just doesn’t want to deal with the hassle of hiring lawyers,” Ingraham added. “But it is a scandal that CNN allowed this to be published without the rigorous journalistic standards.”

Ingraham, however, noted that this “fake news” scandal in which reporters were caught grasping at straws to tie Trump and his officials to the Russians “is not surprising.”

“But Donald Trump has been right about a lot of the fake news. And this is just one story. Other stories have already been retracted, and they have been written and … ‘investigated’ by people we are understanding to be serious journalists,” Ingraham said. “What about the kids who just started at CNN? How is their track record holding up? So I think Donald Trump’s right to be very frustrated with all of this.”