President Trump unloaded on TIME magazine reporters in a profanity-laced Oval Office tirade after an hour of what he called nonstop negative questions, and he conceded regret over his three Supreme Court picks.
Near the end of an hour-long sit-down in the Oval Office, Daily Mail reported, Donald Trump erupted at the TIME journalists across from him. He said they had not asked him “one f***ing positive question.”
The blow-up capped a session heavy on his media crackdown, the White House ballroom project, the fate of the Kennedy Center, and whether he would pardon members of his administration before leaving office. Trump dismissed the line of inquiry as “all negative.”
He also scolded the reporters for failing to press him on Venezuela, even though they had already raised it earlier. Aides moved to wrap up the session as the temperature rose.
Trump’s frustration was plain. “Well, I hope I get a decent story. I don’t think, you know, it’s hard to get a good story. Every question’s a hit. I don’t know what the h***’s wrong,” he said.
The interview took a sharper turn when Trump turned on the three justices he put on the high court. He conceded he regrets nominating Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
“I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often,” Trump said.
That anger has been simmering since a February ruling. The Supreme Court held 6-3 that an emergency economic powers law gave him no authority to impose his sweeping tariffs on his own. The decision opened the door to as much as $175 billion in refunds owed to importers. Trump said the tariff ruling should have included a clause sparing the government from handing the money back.
In June, the court dealt him another defeat on his order ending birthright citizenship. Barrett joined Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberals to strike it down. Kavanaugh voted to block the order under federal law, as described in the account. Trump said the liberal wing will “stick like glue.”
Trump wanted more focus on Venezuela. He boasted of “another war that we already won” after U.S. forces ousted Nicolas Maduro in January, according to the report.
Cost-of-living pressure dominated another stretch of the exchange. National average regular gasoline now sits at $4.46 a gallon. Before the war began, a gallon cost under $3.
Tehran shut the Strait of Hormuz after U.S. and Israeli strikes in February. The strait carries one-fifth of the world’s energy supply. Over the weekend, Trump rejected Tehran’s latest ceasefire offer to reopen it as “not good enough.” He insisted oil prices will tumble once Iran signs a deal.
“The only thing I have to get down now is the gas,” Trump said.
GOP insiders privately fear rising energy costs could cost Republicans their House and Senate majorities in the midterms. Trump brushed off approval ratings as “fake” and said pollsters are “almost as corrupt as the writers.” He insisted he would beat anyone running today by 20 points.
The sit-down came as TIME prepared another cover on the president. It is Trump’s 56th TIME magazine cover, a record for any president, surpassing Richard Nixon’s tally from the Watergate era. The cover headline is “Trump’s way.” It shows him by a new South Lawn helipad, with ballroom construction visible in the background.
During the interview, Trump held up old photographs of a crumbling White House. He used them to frame the renovation work now under way, including the ballroom project the reporters had pressed him on.
From the president’s chair, the pattern was the same one conservatives have watched for years: an hour in the room, and almost no interest in wins he wanted on the record. Venezuela. Border and enforcement fights. Court losses he ties to judges who will not back the agenda that put them there. Gas at $4.46 while a key energy chokepoint stays closed.
Trump repeated his closing complaint as the meeting ended. He wanted a decent story. He did not expect one. Every question, in his telling, was a hit.
Hostile outlets will cast a president’s pushback as the story. Voters watching gas prices, court fights, and soft coverage of hard results may hear something else entirely: a commander-in-chief tired of an interview that never left the attack lane.
