Back-to-back rejections in federal court of Donald Trump’s signature actions has the president fuming, his biographer says.
Author Michael Wolff told the Daily Beast podcast Inside Trump’s Head about the fallout from two rulings since last Friday: an appeals court finding that Trump’s tariffs exceeded his authority, and a federal judge ruling that his deployment of National Guard soldiers to L.A. to do domestic law enforcement actions was also illegal.
“In our system of government, the president is told ‘no’ a lot. That’s a check and balance, and you have to adapt to it, work around it, rethink it. Again, that is all about process. Trump doesn’t do that,” Wolff tells host Joanna Coles in Friday’s episode.
“When this happened…I called up people in the White House,” Wolff added. “One person said, ‘Uh oh.’ Another person I spoke to said, ‘Bad weather.’”
“It’s a baseline to understand Donald Trump: you can’t say no to him,” he went on. “You just can’t say no, and when someone does say no, he flies into a rage. He goes off his rocker.”
Wolff explained that one method the White House deploys to satisfy the president is to look for “soft language” in laws that can be exploited.
“There is often an exception built into the law for crisis situations,” he said. “The president cannot unilaterally set tariffs. But in an emergency situation, you might argue that the president does have that power. If it becomes a national security issue, then the president might have that power.”
An appeals court found that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) statute Trump cited to impose tariffs does not “explicitly include the power to impose tariffs.” Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Regarding National Guard troops in Los Angeles, Wolff noted that Trump’s justification of an immigration enforcement crisis didn’t fly with the judge. Then it became time for “step two”: “argue that the person who can define the crisis is the president of the United States.”
“So this is entirely circular and entirely adds up to ‘I can do what I want on my own say-so,’” Wolff said. “The courts have now said, at least in federal appeals court in terms of tariffs, saying ‘No, you can’t.’”
Doing so is a “personal affront” to Trump, he said.
“What he does is essentially then say, ‘How am I going to oppose this? I am not going to take this. I’m going to war against this.’ I mean, there is this whole thing about him going to war. When this happens, he has to upend it. He has to upset it. He has to reverse it. And then he has to punish the people who have done that to him.
Armed members of the National Guard are seen outside the Edward Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles in June. FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images
When reached for comment by the Daily Beast about what Wolff and Coles had to say, the White House replied with the meme that reads, “I ain’t reading all that. I’m happy for u tho. Or sorry that happened.”
The White House has previously doubted the pair’s credibility.
“Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles are lying sacks of s–t and have been proven to be frauds,” Communications Director Steven Cheung said Tuesday. “They routinely fabricate stories originating from their sick and warped imagination, only possible because they have a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted their peanut-sized brains.”