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I Am Clarence Thomas's Complete Lack Of Irony

Does he not... hear what he's saying?

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Guest arrivals: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and wi

(Photo by Gerald Martineau/Washington Post/Getty Images)

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke at an event on Friday, hosted by Orrin Hatch’s foundation.

Sigh. Those comments are garnering a bunch of attention as he reportedly went off on the floated but not actually implemented idea that the number of Supreme Court justices should be increased from the current nine.

He said:

“You can cavalierly talk about packing or stacking the court. You can cavalierly talk about doing this or doing that. At some point the institution is going to be compromised.”

….

“By doing this,” he said, “you continue to chip away at the respect of the institutions that the next generation is going to need if they’re going to have civil society.”

Notably absent from his ire was the way that a Republican-controlled Senate stole what should have been Merrick Garland’s seat on the Supreme Court
— which, tbh, has worked out pretty well for the GOP.

He went on with an astonishing lack of irony:

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“Let’s be honest. This is really about the results they want. They haven’t been able to make the institutions do what they want, to give them what they want. That’s no court at all. That’s no rule of law,” Thomas said.

“You can’t keep taking chips out of your institutions and not expect it to, at some point, be compromised. At some point, it can’t keep withstanding the efforts to undermine,” Thomas said.

My dude. Where was this fire when Mitch McConnell was refusing to consider Garland’s nomination to the Court? That was, um, some compromising ish. Or when his colleagues are out there making partisan speeches.

Never mind the Court is already busy chipping away at fundamental rights, and is poised to do even more violence to them this Term, upending 50 years of precedent. (And who knows what other rights will soon be on the chopping block.)

Can lack of self awareness actually be a medical condition? Asking for a Supreme Court justice. Because, yes friends, there’s more. Thomas also spoke of his wife:

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The justice briefly broached the subject of his wife, Ginni, who’s under fire for her longtime activism and involvement with right-wing groups, including one linked to former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Ginni Thomas is a leader of the Council for National Policy, a group, according to an investigation from The New York Times, a controversial plan to pressure lawmakers in a handful of states Trump lost to challenge the election results in the hopes of keeping Trump in office.

“She is a good person,” Thomas said of his wife.

Thomas did not address that controversy directly, and instead blamed the media — who he called “the tawdry people” — for inciting division.

“It’s one of the things you have to accept in these public jobs, that the media paints an image of you as an abstract thing. It’s not you. It’s their perception of you and what they want the world to think of you,” Thomas said.

So, what’s the latest on noted “good person” Ginni Thomas? Oh. OOOOHHHHH.

 

Maybe the “efforts to undermine” the Court are coming FROM INSIDE THE (court)HOUSE!

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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