No Maine lobster for Trump?

By Ted Cohen/The Maine Wire

The question now isn’t whether President Trump will ever invite the country’s top judge to his Mar-A-Lago hideout for a round of golf.

Now it’s whether the chief U.S. Supreme Court justice will ever invite the president to his Maine vacation home for a round of lobster.

Make that homes – plural.

The Chief Justice, John Roberts, who owns not one but two summer vacation homes in St. George, Maine, lectured Trump on Tuesday after the President criticized a federal judge who tried to stop his deportation of Venezuelan immigrants.

It’s the second time that the powerful, part-time Maine resident has given Trump a scolding.

Roberts bought his second summer home on Hupper Island in 2016 – ten years after buying the first one on the same island.

Both properties were purchased from Steve Thomas, a former host of the TV show “This Old House.”

So, will Roberts and Trump be cracking Maine lobster claws this summer?

Claws, maybe, but not lobster.

Roberts tore into the president Tuesday after Trump questioned a federal judge’s decision to try to stop him from expelling Venezuelan gang members from the U.S.

The president said that the judge nosing in on the Venezuelan case should face impeachment.

In a rare direct response to a presidential statement, Roberts rebuked Trump’s morning polemic against Chief DC US District Judge James Boasberg, according to the New York Post.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” the chief justice wrote.

Trump and Maine’s two-vacation-home judicial schoolmarm have clashed before over the president’s criticism of judges.

In 2018, Roberts reprimanded Trump for saying U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar of California – who had ruled against the 45th president’s prohibition on asylum for people who illegally entered the US – was “an Obama judge.”

Meanwhile, as the dust-up between Roberts and Trump was making news, the chief justice’s Maine island summer homes were already suffering a pre-summer chill after all of Maine’s federal judges (who also report to Roberts) refused to listen to the appeal of a Republican-censured member of the Maine House of Representatives.

In fact, Roberts should be required to issue a bench order from St. George revoking their pre-ordered lobster dinners – and instead giving them to Trump as a reward for the president’s having successfully stood up to Gov. Janet Mills, D-Maine, in the fight involving Libby’s opposition to allowing boys’ participation in girls’ sports.