The Media Research Center’s main focus on the right-wing Supreme Court justice defense beat in recent months has been Samuel Alito, but it hasn’t forgot about the justice who arguably needs that kneejerk partisanship the most, Clarence Thomas. A May 7 post by Alex Christy whined that HBO host John Oliver re-upped his attempt to bribe the greed-prone Thomas to leave the court, which the MRC freaked out over when he first made it:
HBO’s host of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver, traveled to NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers on Monday for one of his periodic visits to his network-based cohorts. During his visit, Oliver and Meyers reminisced about the time Oliver promised Justice Clarence Thomas $1 million to “get the fuck off the Supreme Court,” with Oliver doubling down, “Honestly, I’d open it up again.”
Meyers recalled that “there is something that has not happened yet that you threw out into the universe. You basically offered Clarence Thomas a million dollars a year—not just a million dollars, a million dollars a year if he resigned from the Supreme Court.”
Amid cheering from the audience, Oliver also remembered that it is “so easy to feel that way when you didn’t make the offer and I felt exactly like you until the offer went out on TV. I was so excited. “Oh, that was fun. That show went really well. Oh [bleep], it’s about to happen now, isn’t it?”
After a bit about how Oliver’s wife was not as thrilled as the audience with the idea, he declared, “It was both a huge relief and massively disappointing that he didn’t take it.”
Meyers then wondered, “What was the window of time you gave him?”
Oliver then doubled down, “It was—we gave him 30 days. Honestly, I’d open it up again. If— ahead of — As long as—As long as he gets out before the—before they’re doing the June decisions. I would be willing to open discussions again.”
Christy returned for a bit of hair-splitting in a May 24 post:
MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell spread straight-up disinformation on her Friday show as she accused Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of condemning the famous 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education that ruled segregation unconstitutional because, apparently, nobody at MSNBC knows how to read.
The context was the Court ruling that South Carolina did not do anything illegal in not drawing a second district where black voters would’ve made a substantial portion of the electorate. Addressing the NCAAP’s Janai Nelson, Mitchell read, “something that really was striking to me is Justice Clarence Thomas in his concurring opinion with the majority, he also went after Brown v. Board of Education, saying quote ‘such extravagant uses of judicial power are at odds with the history and tradition of the equity power and the Framers’ design.’”
Flabbergasted, she continued, “Now, Clarence Thomas took the seat of Thurgood Marshall, who argued Brown v. Board for the Legal Defense Fund. This landmark case that changed America forever. So, I’m just– I can’t get over that. Tell me what your reaction is.”
Most people know Brown was decided in 1954 and banned segregation, but fewer people are aware of a second case decided in 1955 with the same name.
[…]Thomas clearly wrote “Brown II” and was clearly not condemning desegregation.
That, however, is arguably a distinction without a difference. Brown II was the court’s enforcement mechanism for the original Brown decision, as summarized thusly:
The Court held that the problems identified in Brown I required varied local solutions. Chief Justice Warren conferred much responsibility on local school authorities and the courts which originally heard school segregation cases. They were ordered to implement the principles which the Supreme Court embraced in its first Brown decision. Warren urged localities to act on the new principles promptly and to move toward full compliance with them “with all deliberate speed.”
Christy — and Thomas, apparently — did not explain why it’s a bad thing to have an enforcement mechanism to desegregate schools, or how having one could be an “extravagant” use of judicial power.
When evidence emerged that Thomas took even more previously undisclosed lavish freebie trips with right-wing moneybags Harlan Crow, Jorge Bonilla tried to pretend it wasn’t a big deal in a June 13 post:
We are repeatedly told that the press has a fundamental role in safeguarding our institutions, nay, our Democracy — notwithstanding the media’s role in the left’s ongoing attack against the Supreme Court. But, on occasion, the truth emerges.
Watch as CBS’s Jan Crawford nukes the latest attempt to smear Justice Clarence Thomas, at the end of the network’s coverage of the Supreme Court’s unanimous punt on abortion pills:
Actually, all that Crawford did was note that the court changed its disclosure rules and such trips will have to be disclosed going forward. Still, the ever-conspiratorial Bonilla ranted that this was “the latest in an ongoing effort to delegitimize the conservative-majority Supreme Court,” adding: “Between this and the Alito flag kerfuffle, now with activists wearing wires and trying to catch Alito and wife in some scandalous statement, it is clear that the left is running an ongoing op with the aim of undermining public confidence in the Supreme Court. And the Regime Media are largely complicit in these efforts.” Bonilla didn’t explain how catching these justices engaging in behavior even he doesn’t dispute constitutes some kind of “ongoing op.”