Justice Samuel Alito says he ignores President Trump’s praise and criticism of fellow justices, warning that escalating public rhetoric can erode the Supreme Court’s standing with the American people.
In a rare televised interview on Fox News Sunday, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito told host Shannon Bream that he does not dwell on the president’s frequent compliments or recent criticism of other members of the Court. The Hill reported his remarks as a deliberate effort to keep outside political noise from shaping how he does his job.
Alito framed the issue as institutional, not personal. He said he and his colleagues try to tune out praise and attacks alike so the Court can decide cases on the law.
His concern ran deeper than any single post or interview. Alito said rising public rhetoric about the Court as a whole, and about individual justices, threatens the long-term confidence Americans place in the judiciary.
"I put all of that out of my mind. I trust that my colleagues put all of that out of their minds,"
Alito said on the program. He then tied the point to the Court’s durability.
"But I am concerned about the escalation in public rhetoric in general and about the things that people in important positions say about the Supreme Court as a whole and about individual justices. I’m concerned about the long-term effect of that on the standing of the court,"
he continued. He added that if the Court loses a degree of trust among the American people, “that will be very deleterious.”
President Trump has praised Alito often and has also voiced frustration with other justices he placed on the bench. In a Time magazine interview cited in the same coverage, Trump said he regrets nominating Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh.
“What can I do? I put them in,” Trump said in that interview. “They voted against me too often.”
Last month, after the high court blocked a Trump mail voting plan, the president unloaded on Truth Social. He did not name every justice in the blast, but he left little doubt about his anger at the outcome.
"These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves, a Court that is costing the United States Trillions of Dollars with shockingly bad rulings that are of such magnitude that it won’t be easily possible for our Country to recover or heal,"
Trump wrote. In the same post he called Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas “legends,” pointing to their dissent from the mail-voting ruling.
Alito’s Fox News answer treated that praise the same way he treated the criticism: as something to set aside. For readers who follow the justice’s recent public comments, the stance fits a broader pattern of Alito confirming he will stay on the Court and keep deciding cases without chasing political applause.
Trump also singled Alito out earlier this year for writing a landmark decision that limited a central provision of the Voting Rights Act. That praise landed alongside the president’s broader complaint that other nominees have broken with him too often.
Alito’s record includes the 2022 vote with other conservative justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. In a separate interview this week with CBS News, he said that vote took “courage.” He also said he had considered retiring at the end of the most recent term, a point that tracks with earlier coverage of how Alito weighed retiring this year and would revisit the choice over time.
On Fox News Sunday and in the CBS exchange described in the reporting, Alito did not pretend the Roe decision would be popular with everyone who wants a constitutional right to abortion. He said he expected anger. What he did not expect, he said, were the most extreme forms of the reaction that followed.
"I anticipated that it would anger a great many people who believed and continue to believe strongly that there should be a constitutional right to abortion. So I understood that,"
Alito said. He added that he “didn’t anticipate the particulars” of the backlash, including “the most extreme forms.”
That warning sits next to other Court testimony already on the record. In July, Justices Barrett and Elena Kagan told lawmakers the Court needs more money to defend against a persistent rise in threats aimed at justices and their families. Alito’s comments on rhetoric and public trust land in that climate, not in a vacuum. Related reporting has also covered how overturning Roe required courage amid rising threats to the judiciary.
Alito’s message was simple. Presidential praise does not guide him. Presidential criticism does not guide him either. He said he assumes his colleagues take the same approach.
That is how a constitutional court is supposed to work. Justices swear to apply the law, not to manage a president’s approval or a cable-news cycle. Trump is entitled to argue that some rulings were wrong and that some nominees have disappointed him. Voters can judge those claims. The justices still have to decide the next case without treating either compliments or attacks as instructions.
Alito has now said publicly, more than once, that he is not walking away from that duty. Coverage of his plans has included how he shut down retirement talk and committed to another term, even after weighing the option at the end of the last one.
The contrast is clear enough. One side of the political class treats every major ruling as a loyalty test. Alito is telling the country he will not play that game, and that if “people in important positions” keep hammering the Court as a partisan prop, the damage will fall on the institution itself.
Courts keep their authority when they keep their distance from the roar outside the marble. Alito is choosing the distance. The country is better off when justices do.
