Trump Shares Post Suggesting Amy Coney Barrett Is ‘Clearly Terrified of the Left’
Key Takeaways
- •Trump shared a post accusing Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett of being “clearly terrified of the left” without adding commentary.
- •The post was a response to a viral claim that Barrett’s voting record has shifted away from the court’s conservative bloc after Dobbs v. Jackson.
- •X’s community notes labeled the viral claim inaccurate and cited data suggesting Barrett has continued to vote with conservative justices at higher rates than claimed.
- •The episode reflects Trump’s growing frustration with the Supreme Court, including rulings that have gone against his agenda.
- •The court has also issued decisions favorable to Trump, making his criticism of it notable because his relationship with the bench has been mixed.
President Donald Trump appeared to endorse a theory that Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett — whom he nominated in 2020 — is "clearly terrified of the left" by sharing a prominent right-wing figure’s post about her voting record on social media Wednesday.
Conservative podcaster Tim Pool wrote that "Amy Coney Barrett is clearly terrified of the left" in response to a viral post on X highlighting her voting record and a supposed decline in her alignment with the bench’s other conservative justices. Trump shared Pool’s post on his social media platform Truth Social without additional commentary.
The apparent slight is the latest example of Trump’s growing hostility toward the Supreme Court, including justices he nominated. Although the Supreme Court has delivered Trump an unprecedented number of judicial victories, it has also handed down several notable defeats to his agenda, rejecting his bid to appeal a civil defamation case and ruling against most of his so-called reciprocal tariffs. Trump’s decision to amplify criticism of Barrett also underscores how the court’s rulings have become a recurring flashpoint for the former president as he weighs a bench that has often been favorable to him but not uniformly so.
The viral post Pool was responding to was written by an anonymous right-wing account known as "Roscoe Smith IV." It claimed that Barrett’s rate of voting with the “conservative position” in “non-unanimous cases” fell from 81% “into the 50-60% range” after the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson.
That claim was flagged as inaccurate by X’s automatic fact-checking service, known as “community notes,” which pointed to publicly available data suggesting Barrett has voted alongside conservative justices at rates higher than the viral post indicated.