Supreme Court

Clarence Thomas Speaks In Rare Media Interview

Justice Thomas really enjoys Ayn Rand because of course he does.

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Justice Thomas is known for his silence. He never asks questions at oral argument and ever since his confirmation hearings — an event more surreal to remember with the current focus on sexual harassment in the workplace — he’s stayed largely out of the public light. He’s talked more to TMZ than any mainstream outlet.

But his former clerk Laura Ingraham, Fox News’s latest attempt to plug a Megyn Kelly-sized ratings hole, needed to make a splash in her 10 p.m. timeslot and managed to convince her old boss to grant her an exclusive interview. She introduced the pre-recorded interview by reverentially announcing that Justice Thomas “HAD” a tremendous legal career, and I started to wonder if this was going to be his exclusive retirement announcement. Turns out that didn’t happen. Too bad, because I think we were all wondering what Justice Andrew Napolitano would be like. So what happened in this wild interview?

On Racism: At one point Laura Ingraham is going to tell Clarence Thomas that his grandparents faced REAL segregation. You know, before the GOOD segregation of the 1950s. Then, as Christina Wilkie pointed out, “Ingraham just asked Clarence Thomas if he ever saw Confederate monuments get torn down when he was a kid. In Savannah Georgia. In the 1950s”:

This portion of the interview deserves repeated critical examination for how perfectly it encapsulates the Fox News rhetorical model. Racism wasn’t bad in your lifetime, audience! Confederate statues were no big deal and black people were cool with it! See, Clarence Thomas got to read books when he was a kid, so how bad could it really have been? At every turn, the network’s audience of mostly white seniors is handed a warm glass of undeserved absolution. Fox News is really steeped in a Medieval Catholic ideology selling indulgences one MAGA hat at a time.

On Ayn Rand: After Justice Thomas parroted the dumb talking point that young people aren’t exposed to alternative viewpoints, he held up his own path as a model. Why was there a boy reading Ayn Rand in Savannah, Georgia?

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Look, there’s a time in the life of every young man who fancies himself reasonably book smart that Ayn Rand comes along and fills a void by presenting a world where people like you are finally appreciated and allowed to lord over all the dumb people. Most people then accumulate some life experience and realize Rand is a juvenile fantasy. Others, apparently, back into the Supreme Court and sit there for a quarter century.

On Gorsuch: Regarding Neil Gorsuch’s reputation for ruffling the feathers of the rest of the Court, Justice Thomas affably responds, “I don’t have any feathers.” That’s actually a pretty clever response, but also kind of a softball question. No justice is going to throw a colleague under the bus on national television like that. This is all about uncovering cracks in the Supreme Court’s staid facade. They’re not going to start publicly ripping each other — I mean, this isn’t the Seventh Circuit. Maybe if Ingraham ever had to help her boss craft a probing question she’d be better at these nuances.

This guy would have laughed.

On Scalia: As one might expect of Fox News, there was the obligatory Antonin Scalia circle jerk. That’s probably a gauche reference, but since Justice Scalia likely have laughed at it, we’ll stick with it. More interesting than the recitation of Justice Scalia’s genius guiding light was the abrupt 180 the interview took to build the case that Justice Thomas was always his own jurist and never just parroted Nino. Fair enough… there’s a compelling argument out there that it was Thomas who dragged Scalia into a retrograde hellscape and not the other way around.

On Judicial Philosophy: When asked about his judicial philosophy, Justice Thomas says his approach is “to get it right,” sparking the collective eye roll of anyone who ever read Connick v. Thompson. Frankly some empty platitudes about deciding medical patent cases the way the Founders would have would be better. If we’re not getting an honest answer, at least give a thoughtful dishonest answer.

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The whole interview is worth watching as it peels back the cone of silence Justice Thomas tends to live in.

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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