Trump Supporters Back Bukele's Plea for US President to Crack Down on American Judges

Donald Trump does not usually take counsel, particularly from foreign leaders who often seek to flatter and admire the American leader.

But, El Salvador's strongman president Nayib Bukele has adopted a different approach by calling on the Trump administration to follow his example in impeaching what he terms “corrupt judges.”

The call for the president to move against the US judiciary also garnered support from Trump allies, including an X post by one-time supporter Elon Musk, who has in the past amplified the Salvadoran's calls to impeach US judges.

Unprecedented Threats to Judicial Independence

Experts say that Bukele's latest remarks come at a time of unmatched threats to judicial independence and specific justices in the United States, and during a phase where the president's team is using comparable authoritarian methods used by leaders in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, the Asian nation, and his native El Salvador to weaken democratic accountability.

Bukele's social media statement recently was just the latest in a long series of taunts and allegations he has made against the US's legal system, including a spring claim that the US was “experiencing a judicial coup,” and his mockery of a court's order to stop deportation flights sending suspected undocumented individuals to his nation's brutal prison system.

Attacks on Oregon Justice

Bukele's impeachment call was also made amid social media criticism on the state's justice Karin Immergut by presidential advisor Stephen Miller, attorney general Pam Bondi, Musk, and the president personally in a recent media briefing.

Immergut had issued injunctions blocking Trump from deploying the national guard, initially in the state then in California. Trump has been eager to send troops into Portland, which the leader has described as “war-ravaged” based on limited, non-violent demonstrations outside the city's federal building.

History of Attacking Justices

The advisor, Bondi, and the entrepreneur have a long record of attacking judges who have ruled against presidential directives or otherwise hindered the government's political agenda. Before resuming office recently, the president urged his followers against judges presiding over his legal cases, who were then inundated with threats and harassment.

Watchdog organizations, police departments, and judges themselves have highlighted a increased atmosphere of risks and intimidation in the months since he returned to the presidency.

Rising Risk Data

According to data gathered by the US Marshals Service, in the current year through the end of September, there were 562 threats to nearly four hundred federal judges, giving rise to more than eight hundred investigations. 2025 has already eclipsed the first recorded year, and last year, and is likely to exceed 2023's high of 630 reported incidents.

The threats are not just happening at the national level. Information by Princeton's research project indicates that there have been at least fifty-nine instances of threats, harassment, stalking, or violence committed against judges on the state and municipal levels in the current year.

Expert Analysis on Threat Sources

Specialists state that the intimidation are a result of the language coming from top government officials.

In spring, the watchdog group published a detailed report alleging that “harmful and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and supporters coincide with rising aggressive posts on online platforms.” It recorded “a fifty-four percent increase in demands for impeachment and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from the first two months 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration.”

Beirich, the co-founder of GPAHE, said: “The president's warnings against judges have certainly driven digital abuse at judges and demands for impeachment. Targeting the judiciary is another move in Trump’s march towards strongman rule.”

Global Strongman Tactics

That march towards authoritarianism has been common in the past decade in multiple countries, such as by the Salvadoran.

In 2021, right after starting a second term despite legal bans, Bukele’s allies in congress voted to dismiss the nation's attorney general and several justices on the supreme court. The judges, who had provoked his ire by rejecting coronavirus measures, were replaced by new appointees selected by the leader.

The action echoed Viktor Orbán’s remodeling of the nation's judiciary in 2018; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s court cleanups in 2019; and efforts at comparable actions in the Middle Eastern state and Poland.

Weakening Court Autonomy

Experts explain that the threats and verbal assaults in the US can be viewed as attempts to weaken court autonomy in a structure that provides no simple method for the president to dismiss judges the administration opposes.

Meghan Leonard, an academic at the university who has researched authoritarian backsliding in free nations, said the Trump administration had taken cues from the examples set by authoritarians overseas.

“The administration is looking around at these achievements and failures. They know they’re not going to be able to pass any legislation that would weaken the courts,” she said.

Citing instances such as Miller’s persistent claims of nearly limitless presidential authority, she added: “They openly criticize the judiciary by stating repeatedly that it is not a co-equal branch in the separation of powers.

“They continue to reframe the debate by emphasizing their claim that the president has more power than this other co-equal branch, which is not how separation powers work.”

Leonard said: “Judges' sole safeguard is people’s belief in the authority of their ability to make those rulings. Individual threats on top of eroding trust in courts may make judges think twice about decisions that go against the sitting government, which is, of course, massively problematic for judicial review and for democracy.”

Intimidation Tactics

Scheppele, academic of sociology and global studies at Princeton University, has documented the use of “authoritarian law” by the such as Orbán and Putin, and has spoken out about rising threats to judges in the US.

She pointed to a series of termed “pizza doxxings” this year, in which judges have received unwanted pizza deliveries with the customer listed as Daniel Anderl, the child of Judge Esther Salas, who was killed at the judge’s home in 2020 by a assailant aiming at Salas.

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

“US justices are protected by the presidential protection and the federal police. And those are both dedicated police units that sit institutionally inside the Department of Justice. And the former AG has been spearheading the criticism on federal judges.”

Administration Aims

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