Trump hits out at rivals on final day in India

US president Donald Trump has lashed out at supreme court justices and his Democratic rivals during the second and last day of a whirlwind trip to India. Addressing reporters and business leaders, Trump warned of economic calamity if he loses his American re-election race in November and repeated his call for two liberal-leaning supreme court justices to recuse themselves from cases involving him or his administration.

The Republican president also said he had not been briefed on intelligence suggesting Russia is meddling in the 2020 election, either to bolster him or Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.

“Nobody ever told me that,” he said at a news conference, later adding: “I want no help from any country and I haven’t been given help from any country.”

This comes despite Russia’s well-documented meddling in the 2016 election to help Trump win.

The US leader had joked at the beginning of the news conference that he would be “very, very conservative” in his answers to avoid distracting from his “fantastic two days” in India.

But then he quickly launched into attacks, including criticising supreme court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, the latter for a blistering dissent that was critical of the Trump administration’s rush to claim emergencies when asking the supreme court to review cases.

“I just don’t know how they can not recuse themselves for anything Trump or Trump-related,” he said.

He added: “What Justice Sotomayor said yesterday was highly inappropriate. She’s trying to shame people with perhaps a different view into voting her way.” He said Ginsburg had gone “wild” against him during the 2016 campaign.