OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
One of the co-hosts of ABC’s “The View” appeared shocked by a remark from guest and far-left MSNBC host Rachel Maddow regarding some of the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative-leaning justices.
“The blatant corruption of a couple of these Supreme Court justices is John Roberts’ problem. He is the chief justice, he has to police it to save his court and to save the legal system,” the MSNBC host said, which appeared to surprise co-host Sunny Hostin, who is an attorney by trade.
Left-wing media and Democrats have recently upped their attacks against Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the former for not fully reporting gifts like private flights and other amenities from a wealthy Republican donor and the latter over the flying of a U.S. flag upside-down for a time at his residence.
Hostin appeared to question Maddow’s claims, but the latter stood by them.
“I work at MSNBC. If there was a member of my family lobbying the White House chief of staff, saying, ‘overturn this election result,’ you think they’d let me cover that election result, let alone give a binding judicial ruling on that election result?” she said, a reference to Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows urging him to challenge then-President Trump’s 2020 election loss.
Maddow also argued the Supreme Court had effectively already given Trump immunity, despite not yet issuing a ruling on his immunity claim, “because they’ve already delayed things so long that the stuff that he did in 2020, he’s not going to be tried for before he potentially gets back in the White House.”
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For the record, according to past rules and standards, Thomas was not required to make such disclosures. He acknowledged that recent changes to those rules would require them in the future, and he vowed to follow the new rule. As for Alito, he claimed that his wife was the one who turned the flag upside down and there has been no evidence to suggest otherwise.
Also, The View’s co-hosts are fickle in their criticisms; most of them were singing the high court’s praises when justices preserved access to the abortion medication mifepristone.
“It does restore a little bit of my faith in the court,” Hostin said on Thursday. “Because the legal standard is, do you have standing to bring a case? Can anybody bring a case in front of the Supreme Court? No. You have to prove that you have injuries resulting from it, and so you’ve got a group of doctors and a group of citizens, and all of these people bring this challenge to the FDA and say, we don’t want this pill.”
Co-host Sara Haines said the ruling reminded her to remain faithful in the country’s institutions.
“We focus so much on the hot topics, on the results, rather than the legal reasoning and always call the judges conservative or liberal. It’s about the interpretation of the law, so reminding ourselves to have faith in this judicial [system], especially the Supreme Court, because it’s easy to attack them like regular politicians, but we need to remain faithful in our institutions. That’s why so many of us are scared,” she said.
Writing for the court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh acknowledged what he characterized as the challengers’ “sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections” to elective abortion “by others” and to the FDA’s 2016 and 2021 changes to the conditions on the use of the drug. The challengers did not demonstrate that they would be harmed by the FDA’s mifepristone policies, the judge explained.
Under the Constitution, simply objecting to abortion and the FDA’s policies is not sufficient to bring a case in federal court. He suggested that the appropriate place to voice those objections is in the political or regulatory arena.
