Trump Supporters Endorse Bukele's Call for Trump to Target US Judiciary

The US President is not typically known for advice, particularly from foreign leaders who frequently seek to flatter and admire the American leader.

But, the Central American nation's strongman president Bukele has adopted a distinct approach by calling on the White House to emulate his actions in impeaching so-called “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to take action against the American court system also received support from Maga figures, such as an X post by former supporter the billionaire, who has previously boosted the Salvadoran's demands to oust US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Analysts say that the leader's latest intervention occur of unmatched threats to court autonomy and individual judges in the United States, and during a phase where the Trump administration is using similar strong-arm tactics employed by rulers in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to weaken government oversight.

Bukele's social media call recently was one more in a long series of taunts and allegations he has made against the American judiciary, such as a March claim that the US was “facing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a federal judge's order to halt removal operations transporting accused illegal immigrants to his nation's brutal correctional facilities.

Attacks on Federal Judge

The Salvadoran's impeachment call was also issued amid social media attacks on the state's federal judge Karin Immergut by White House aide Stephen Miller, former AG Bondi, Musk, and Trump personally in a recent press gaggle.

The judge had issued injunctions preventing Trump from deploying the military reserves, first in the state then in the West Coast state. The president has been pushing to send troops into Portland, which the leader has described as “battle-scarred” based on limited, peaceful demonstrations outside the urban federal building.

History of Targeting Judges

Miller, the former AG, and the entrepreneur have a history of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or in other ways hindered the administration's policy goals. Before resuming office this year, the president urged his supporters against judges overseeing his civil and criminal trials, who were then deluged with intimidation and abuse.

Monitoring groups, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the period since he returned to the White House.

Increasing Threat Statistics

According to data gathered by the federal agency, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 threats to 395 federal judges, leading to more than eight hundred inquiries. 2025 has already surpassed 2022, and 2024, and is likely to exceed the previous year's high of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not only happening at the federal level. Information by the university's research project shows that there have been at least 59 cases of intimidation, harassment, stalking, or violence directed against judges on the local level in the current year.

Analyst Analysis on Root Causes

Specialists say that the threats are a result of the language coming from senior administration figures.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and reckless statements from White House allies and supporters align with rising aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in calls for impeachment and physical intimidation against judges across digital networks from January to February of this year, the initial period of the president's term.”

Beirich, the founder of GPAHE, said: “Trump’s threats against judges have certainly fueled digital abuse at judges and calls for ouster. Attacking the judiciary is one more step in Trump’s advance towards authoritarianism.”

International Authoritarian Tactics

This progression towards authoritarianism has been common in recent years in multiple countries, including by the Salvadoran.

In several years ago, right after commencing a new term despite constitutional prohibitions, Bukele’s parliamentary loyalists voted to dismiss the country’s attorney general and five judges on the constitutional court. The justices, who had angered him by ruling against pandemic policies, made way for new appointees hand picked by Bukele.

The move mirrored the Hungarian leader's remodeling of Hungary’s court system several years back; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s judicial purges recently; and efforts at similar moves in the Middle Eastern state and the European country.

Undermining Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the intimidation and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to undermine judicial independence in a structure that provides no simple method for the executive to remove judges Trump disapproves of.

Leonard, an academic at Illinois State University who has studied democratic decline in democracies, said the Trump administration had learned from the models set by strongmen abroad.

“The government is observing at these achievements and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to enact any legislation that would undermine the judiciary,” she said.

Pointing to instances such as the advisor's persistent assertions of nearly limitless presidential authority, she noted: “They openly criticize the judiciary by stating over and over that it is not a co-equal branch in the government structure.

“They persist in redefine the discussion by emphasizing their argument that the president has more power than this judicial branch, which is not how checks and balances work.”

Leonard said: “Justices' only protection is people’s belief in the authority of their capacity to make those decisions. Individual threats on top of weakening institutional legitimacy may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the current administration, which is, of course, highly concerning for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Kim Lane Scheppele, academic of social science and international affairs at the Ivy League school, has written about the use of “authoritarian law” by the likes of Orbán and the Russian, and has spoken out about escalating dangers to judges in the US.

She highlighted a wave of so-called “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted food orders with the recipient listed as a name, the child of Justice Salas, who was killed at the residence in several years ago by a gunman aiming at Salas.

“All knows what it means. ‘Your address is known. You are a target,’” the professor said.

“Federal judges are guarded by the Secret Service and the Marshals Service. And those are both specialized law enforcement that are placed institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And Pam Bondi has been leading the attacks on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

Regarding the administration’s aims, the expert said that “removing a US justice is almost certainly not going to happen because it’s so hard to do. {Right now|Currently