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The never-Trump legal movement has morphed into a push to pack the courts with Trump-selected judges.
By Dahlia Lithwick
"In October 2016, just weeks before the presidential election, a group of 29 prominent “originalist” legal scholars produced an extraordinary statement decrying Donald Trump’s candidacy. Despite Trump’s stated enthusiasm for originalist judges, these legal luminaries wrote to warn about the dangers the Republican nominee posed to constitutional values. “Our Constitution vests in a single person the executive power of the United States,” they explained in the statement. “In light of his character, judgment, and temperament, we would not vest that power in Donald Trump.”
The letter went on to proffer a searing indictment of then-candidate Trump’s contempt for the Constitution and warned against the kind of transactional compromises that would allow originalists to hold their noses and vote for him:
Many Americans still support Trump in the belief that he will protect the Constitution. We understand that belief, but we do not share it. Trump’s long record of statements and conduct, in his campaign and in his business career, have shown him indifferent or hostile to the Constitution’s basic features—including a government of limited powers, an independent judiciary, religious liberty, freedom of speech, and due process of law.
The signatories noted a slew of reasons to be concerned about Trump’s commitment to constitutional principles: his admiration for foreign dictators, his disregard for the basic principles of equal protection of the laws, and his lifelong tendency to “[treat] the legal system as a tool for arbitrary and discriminatory ends, especially against those who criticize him or his policies.” In the event that any of this was less than clear, they added that a “but the judges” justification for voting for Trump was insufficient: “[We] do not trust him to respect constitutional limits in the rest of his conduct in office, of which judicial nominations are only one part.”..."
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/trumpcast/2017/11/justin_peters_on_fox_news_hosts_and_why_the_network_won_t_change_on_trumpcast.html