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‘Morning Joe’ host Joe Scarborough accused Vice President J.D. Vance of “trolling” when he questioned the judicial branch’s authority after a federal judge temporarily prohibited DOGE from accessing government systems.
A federal judge Saturday temporarily blocked Elon Musk and the government efficiency team he leads from accessing the Treasury’s payment systems after 19 states sued President Donald Trump and the Treasury Department. The tech billionaire raged about the order, calling the judge “corrupt” and demanding he be “impeached NOW!”
The vice president appeared to weigh in on the decision later Sunday, expressing his views on executive power. “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” he said. “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.”
Responding to Vance’s remark, Scarborough said: “The tweet though was circular. It made no sense. And it made no sense because the legitimate powers of the president of the United States is not determined by the president of the United States or the vice president.”
Joe Scarborough slams Vice President J.D. Vance’s tweet as ‘trolling’ after he suggested judges ‘can’t control the executive’s legitimate power’ (MSNBC)The Supreme Court determines “what the legitimate power of the president is, of the vice president is, of what Congress is,” he continued. “That is the way it has been since John Marshall was the first Supreme Court justice. This is trolling.”
On Sunday, Utah Senator Mike Lee offered Vance support, describing his tweet as “100% accurate” and called the judge’s order a judicial “coup.”
Both Vance and Lee graduated from law school, which made their outbursts even more “remarkable,” the ‘Morning Joe’ host said.
“This is all planned,” Scarborough said. Seemingly referring to Republicans, he continued: “They decided they were going to do these things that pushed the boundary of the law that went over the line.”
There’s a long history of judges blocking presidential actions, he argued: “This is how things are.”
The vice president argued that judges ‘aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power’ after a federal judge temporarily blocked DOGE from accessing the Treasury’s payment systems (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)“So when you say a court cannot stop a president from doing what’s in its legitimate power to do, well, yes, of course that’s true. But it is the court that determines the contours of that power. It’s that simple,” Scarborough said, adding: “Remarkable that these people went to law school.”
California Senator Adam Schiff similarly responded to Vance’s remark: “JD, we both went to law school. But we don’t have to be lawyers to know that ignoring court decisions we don’t like puts us on a dangerous path to lawlessness.” He wrote on X: “We just have to swear an oath the constitution. And mean it.”
Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, warned that the vice president’s tweet could be suggesting that “the Trump administration seems to be gearing up to defy a court order.”
The question of who determines the president’s powers “is 100% settled and has been for 222 years,” Goitein said, referring to the 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision. “The core feature of the U.S. Constitution is its separation of powers.”
She added: “If the Trump team ignores the courts, any remaining doubt will be gone: they are trying to reverse the revolution that overthrew King George and gave birth to democracy.
