Much of the evening’s prime-time cable news content was centered around the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the Trump appeal on presidential immunity, after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said he had none. The tone has generally been one of tooth-gnashing and wailing over the timing of the hearing date, April 22nd. Among the left wing commentariat, writer and MSNBC guest Elie Mystal vomited up the wildest take of the evening.
Watch Mystal affirm, without evidence, that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are going to rule for Trump because they want to retire during a Republican presidency, as aired on MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Tonight on Wednesday, February 28th, 2024:
ALEX WAGNER: Well, Elie, in the break leading into the segment, you rightly point out the vested interest that some of these conservatives have in a reelection of Trump as it pertains to their retirement.
ELIE MYSTAL: Clarence Thomas doesn't want to die on that court and he’s getting old and he is never going to retire during a Democratic president. So Clarence Thomas- one of the reasons why he’s not re-cruising himself is that Clarence Thomas needs Trump to win again so Clarence Thomas can retire. And most likely, Sam Alito needs Trump to win again so Alito can retire instead of having to die on the bench. And so that’s at least two of the nine who have a vested professional interest in seeing continued Republican hegemony over this country and that’s not the first time this has happened. As we all know, Sandra Day O'Connor wanted George Bush to be president and thus appointed him president in Bush v. Gore, because she wanted to retire under a Republican president. This is how Republicans roll.
Perhaps there is the possibility that, on a matter as novel and significant as presidential immunity, that the Supreme Court wanted to let the record develop organically, allowing the lower court and appellate court to rule on the matter. And that, furthermore, the Court wanted to allow this to run on regular time so as not to rush such an important opinion and get it right. Hence, the court set the immunity hearing on the current October docket, as opposed to January when it was first requested by Special Counsel Jack Smith. Just maybe.
But such temperate analyses don’t cut it for MSNBC. Which is how you get Elie Mystal wailing about Republican Court-imposed hegemony, and suggesting that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor appointed George W. Bush to the presidency so she could ride off into the sunset.
Wagner was also joined during the segment by Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern, who echoed these same sentiments.
What the segment proved is that the left doesn’t really care about such trivial things as due process or any other such dicta. The only thing that matters is that Donald J. Trump be found guilty and convicted of a serious federal crime before Election Day, 2024. April 22nd throws all that into jeopardy. Hence all the whining and emoting.
