President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee said Wednesday that comments Trump made about the federal appeals court deliberating his travel ban were "disheartening and demoralizing," Fox News has learned.
A source on the president's Supreme Court nomination team told Fox that Judge Neil Gorsuch made the remark in a meeting with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
Blumenthal told reporters after the meeting that Gorsuch had "expressed to me that he is disheartened by the demoralizing and abhorrent comments by president trump about the judiciary."
Earlier Wednesday, Trump slammed the Ninth Cicuit Court of Appeals, which is currently deliberating his executive order temporarily suspending the country's refugee program and banning travel for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries.
"Courts seem to be so political and it would be so great for our justice system if they would be able to read a statement and do what's right," the president said in an address to a group of police chiefs and sheriffs. "And that has to do with the security of our country, which is so important."
Trump focused on the language used in a law detailing presidential powers to limit "inadmissible aliens."
The provision states that when a president finds that the entry of foreigners may be detrimental to U.S. interests, the president may "suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."
"It was written beautifully," Trump told the attendees, asserting that even "a bad high school student would understand this."
Trump tweeted about the order again in the afternoon.
Trump nominated Gorsuch Jan. 31 to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last year.
Fox News' John Roberts and the Associated Press contributed to this report.