Over the weekend, Trump Vice President J.D. Vance took to social media with a declaration about Donald Trump’s “legitimate power” that, frankly, should leave any American absolutely petrified.
Vance was clearly incensed over the recent move by a U.S. district judge to block tech billionaire and Trump jockey Elon Musk and his band of unelected and wildly unchecked DOGE employees from further accessing Treasury Department payment systems.
This led Vance to release a public statement on social media, claiming that US federal judges were not legally allowed to “control” the “legitimate” power of the executive branch — i.e. Donald Trump.
Reuters reported on Saturday that Musk’s unelected Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team was formally blocked from further accessing Treasury Department payment systems by a New York federal judge:
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan issued the order after a coalition of Democratic attorneys general from 19 U.S. states filed a lawsuit late Friday arguing Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has no legal power to access the U.S. Department of Treasury systems. The ruling also applied to other political appointees of President Donald Trump’s administration.”
This prompted Vice President Vance to take to Elon’s social media site X (formerly known as Twitter) with his disturbingly terrifying proclamation that, essentially, Donald Trump should be able to do whatever he wants:
If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
Vance’s public statement ignited an onslaught of backlash from the American people:
Suggesting that a federal judge’s ruling can be ignored is legally false and unconstitutional. The Supremacy Clause (Art. VI) establishes the Constitution and federal laws as the supreme law of the land, binding on all state judges [7, 17]. Marbury v. Madison (1803) [5, 12]…
— P a u l ◉ (@SkylineReport) February 10, 2025
…unless the military operation was unlawful, exceeding the authorities granted to the military by the Constitution and laws of our country.
…unless the prosecution was unlawful.
Judges “say what the law is.” Not generals or prosecutors. https://t.co/h3nEiHi7vF
— Terry Moran 🇺🇸 (@TerryMoran) February 9, 2025
The Vice President of the United States is calling for an end to the Constitution.
The law and the Constitution restrict the power of the Executive Branch, and the Judicial Branch is there to interpret the law and the Constitution.
Whether JD Vance likes it or not.
— Project Liberal 🗽 (@ProjectLiberal) February 9, 2025
The VP appears to be signaling that the administration will ignore court decisions that it does not like. https://t.co/JrxMr5T7as
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) February 9, 2025
JD we have a checks & balance system of government to stop men as Donald Trump from becoming a king or dictator. No matter how you spin it the executive office according to our constitution cannot have complete supreme power.
— Gail Dow (@GailDow12) February 9, 2025
It’s called the “rule of law” @jdvance.
Our constitution created three co-equal branches of government to provide checks and balances on each other (“separation of powers”).
The judiciary makes sure that the executive follows the law.
If you do, then you won’t have problems. https://t.co/4L4WOWnEDX
— Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) February 9, 2025
However, it only served to further spur Elon Musk, who first reposted Vance’s post with American flag emojis:
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2025
Then followed up with a proposal to “fire” the “worst 1% of appointed judges” every year:
I’d like to propose that the worst 1% of appointed judges, as determined by elected bodies, be fired every year.
This will weed out the most corrupt and least competent.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2025
Before openly calling for the judge who blocked him to be impeached:
A corrupt judge protecting corruption.
He needs to be impeached NOW! https://t.co/zgnwZuOz2Y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2025
Unfortunately, this is far from the first time that J.D. Vance has openly suggested that checks and balances shouldn’t apply to the US president.
During a podcast appearance back in 2021, Vance said, “If I was giving [Trump] one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people. And when the courts — because you will get taken to court — and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'”
Then again, in February of 2024, Vance told George Stephanopoulos, “The president has to be able to run the government as he thinks he should. That’s the way the Constitution works. It has been thwarted too much by the way our bureaucracy has worked over the past 15 years.”
Stephanopoulos pushed back, “The Constitution also says the president must abide by legitimate Supreme Court rulings, doesn’t it?”
“The Constitution says that the Supreme Court can make rulings, but if the Supreme Court — and, look, I hope that they would not do this, but if the Supreme Court said the president of the United States can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling, and the president has to have Article II prerogative under the Constitution to actually run the military as he sees fit,” Vance responded at the time.
Featured image via screen capture