Vice President JD Vance hammered Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts about the role of the Supreme Court and claimed Roberts was ‘profoundly wrong’, in a New York Times interview.
“Interesting Times” podcast host Ross Douthat spoke with the Vance while in Rome. Their conversation got heated when speaking on immigration.
The pair parsed words on how many millions of undocumented immigrants are in the United States before Vance went on a diatribe about enforcing “legislative standards.”
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“It’s not like we’re just throwing that process out,” Vance said.
“We’re trying to comply with it as much as possible and actually do the job that we were left –”
Douthat attempted to interrupt, “OK, but —”
Vance prevented Douthat from challenging him.
“Let me just make one final philosophical point here,” Vance said.
“I worry that unless the Supreme Court steps in here, or unless the District Courts exercise a little bit more discretion, we are running into a real conflict between two important principles in the United States.”
The Vice President later added, “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. I thought that was a profoundly wrong sentiment.”
Vance added, “That’s one-half of his job. The other half of his job is to check the excesses of his own branch. You cannot have a country where the American people keep on electing immigration enforcement and the courts tell the American people they’re not allowed to have what they voted for. That’s where we are right now.”
He said the plan for the Trump administration is “to keep working it through the immigration court process, through the Supreme Court as much as possible.”
Success in this area to Vance is not a number but establishing “a set of rules and principles that the courts are comfortable with, and that we have the infrastructure that allows us to deport large numbers of illegal aliens when large numbers of illegal aliens come into the country. That, to me, is real success.”
In the full podcast, the pair spoke on a wide range of topics including how his faith shapes his politics.