The late-night talkshow host John Oliver has offered to pay Clarence Thomas $1m annually – as well as give him a $2m tour bus – if the Republican judge resigns from the US supreme court.
Oliver made the proposal on Sunday’s episode of his HBO show Last Week Tonight, saying the supreme court justice had 30 days to accept or it would expire.
The British-born, progressive comedian’s offer came after a steady drumbeat of media investigations in the previous several months established that Thomas failed to disclose that political benefactors bought him lavish vacation travel and real estate for his mother. Thomas also failed to disclose – as required – that he allowed school fees for a family member to be paid off and had been provided a loan to buy a luxury motor coach, all after openly complaining about the need to raise supreme court justices’ salaries.
As a result, Thomas’s impartiality came into question after he sided with the contentious ruling that eliminated the federal abortion rights once provided by the Roe v Wade case.
He also recently listened to arguments over whether Donald Trump can be removed from states’ ballots in the presidential election after the former president’s supporters – whom he told to “fight like hell” – staged the January 6 attack at the US Capitol in Washington DC. Thomas resisted pressure to recuse himself from matters pertaining to the Capitol attack, even though his wife, Ginni Thomas, is a conservative political activist who has endorsed false claims from Trump and his supporters that the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden was stolen from him – which in turn fueled January 6.
Oliver alluded to all of those circumstances as he extended his lucrative offer to Thomas, saying: “Lot on your plate right now, from stripping away women’s rights to hearing January 6 cases … and you deserve a break, you know, away from the meanness of Washington. So you can be surrounded by the regular folks whose lives you made demonstrably worse for decades.”
The host suggested that Thomas could upgrade his “favorite mode of travel” by signing a contract requiring him to step down from the supreme court in exchange for $1m annually from Oliver along with the tour bus, which is outfitted with a king-sized bed, a fireplace and four televisions.
Oliver joked that Thomas possibly feared that making such a trade might attract negative judgment from one of his top benefactors: the Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow, who was reported to have maintained a private collection of Nazi memorabilia that included a pair of paintings by Adolf Hitler.
But Oliver said: “That’s the beauty of friendship, Clarence. If they’re real friends, they’ll love you no matter what your job is. So I guess this might be the perfect way to find out who your real friends actually are.
“So that’s the offer – $1m a year, Clarence. And a brand new condo on wheels. And all you have to do … is sign the contract and get the fuck off the supreme court,” Oliver remarked. “The clock starts now – 30 days, Clarence. Let’s do this!”
The yearly salary for supreme court justices – whose appointments are for life – is $298,500.
Neither Thomas nor the supreme court immediately commented publicly on Oliver’s offer. Oliver acknowledged he could end up going on “standup tours … for years” to be able to afford paying Thomas’s retirement if the justice accepts the proposal.
The arch-conservative is the longest-serving member of a supreme court dominated 6-3 by rightwingers. Thomas has been there since his 1991 confirmation, which was marked by testimony from Anita Hill, who accused him of sexual harassment while he supervised her in two separate jobs, at the US Department of Education and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
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I don’t know, I can see the value in paying them more, give the gravity of what they deal with….
Otherwise they might be open to bribery 😝
Or we could legislate checks and balances, so that we can hold powerful people accountable for corruption.
As we have recently discovered with Donald Trump, the checks and balances are only as good as the people willing to enforce them.
A government is made of regular people, though notably ungoverned
and who exactly would pass legislation holding themselves to account for crimes they have definitely committed?
Congress could pass the legislation, but they’re just as corrupt
Like they say about religions: If higher wages is the only thing that keeps you from being bribed, you aren’t a good judge to begin with.
There should be one of IRS’s ninja vampire breathing in their back at all times.
It’s not that simple. Better people can just know that they’re more valuable elsewhere and leave. Then the only people you have left are the dirt at the bottom of the bag that are willing to sell out.
And that’s a competitive salary in that field. And I find that reasoning is a right way to define their and many other public servants’ wage. My comment was against the idea of ‘we pay extra to ensure they won’t fall for bribes’.
It should be better than the industry average by a fair margin due to the gravity, personal risk and other such things that come with the job.
Just out of curiosity, because your mention of the concept is not the first I’ve read in this thread: what is the industry average for a private sector supreme court justice?
Yeah I get that. I suppose a clearer statement would be “pay extra so that we attract the quality of person that doesn’t accept bribes”
I mean, why not both?
IDK, I can see the value in seizing the means of production and creating a anarcho-syndicalist commune, in which the economic system based on the exchange of commodities, such as money or goods, is abolished in favor of a fair and universal welfare through equal division of labor and thus the resulting production.
So TLDR: You want to pay the judges even more, creating an even greater divide between the judges and the people which lives their rulings affect, I want torches, pitchforks and guillotines.
By now I realize that I will never be able to travel to the US anyway, so I might as well just go all in…
Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We’ll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
Unfortunately pennies for any comparable positions in the private sector. These people could be owners/partners at law firms easily exceeding half a million plus a year.
It’s almost as if money shouldn’t be the only motivating factor to accepting this kind of position…
He also receives gifts worth literally millions of dollars per year. We’re talking super yacht cruises, travelling via private jets, drinking $1000 bottles of wine. And he claims all those gifts don’t affect his impartiality in any way, even when he’s ruling over cases that directly affect his billionaire “friends”.
He won’t take it. Taking the offer would basically confirm everything bad that’s been said about him. It would also be admitting publicly that he will do literally anything for the right bribe. Thomas only likes to admit that behind closes doors.
True, we all know he won’t take it, especially considering that his benefactors would gladly match it for him to stay in his seat.
But it was a solid end to an episode outlining how scummy he is with his bribes. The episode wouldn’t get as much traction as it would be seen as barely more than another call-out.
And in the one-in-a-milliom chance that he accepts, we still win.
I completely agree! It was a great “fuck you” to Clarence Thomas to really round out the episode lol
I hope the
RVmotorcoach was just a leased demoIt wasn’t even that. It was likely driven over by Prevost to function as advertising. After the shot they just drove it back to the dealership.
Yes but the effect of taking the deal is that it won’t matter for him anymore, because he will have retired and can hide away like the traitor he is.
Oliver makes the point that Thomas really does agree with the views of his billionaire owners, since he held those views even before he became a supreme court justice.
So he’ll stay with the job where he can accept bribes while harming society as much as possible, rather than get paid and not get to do that.
I still don’t think his ego will allow him to admit that John Oliver is right about him though.
Why would he take a cut in pay?
Well with all the bribes Thomas is probably on the take for, yeah, it would be.
If Thomas were only getting the legit government salary, Oliver’s offer would be over three times as much per year. Not to mention he gets that… sweet RV cringes /s
It’s not an RV, it’s a motor home!!!
Motorcoach!
MoCo!
Thomas has me feeling MoCo FOMO
If it were produced by Ford you would have:
FoMoCo MoCo FOMO
If we could extract it and whip it with egg whites we’d have FoMoCo MoCo FOMO foam.
Or we could get real crazy and mix it with a caffeinated alcoholic beverage and have Four Loco FoMoCo MoCo FOMO foam.
It feels really good having Jon Stewart and John Oliver to look forward to every week.
Just looked and seems like Mehdi Hasan found a new home at The Guardian.
Is Mehdi Hasan same similar humour? Or you thinking Hasan Minhaj who’s Patriot Act show was Jon and John vibes.
I don’t think so. My respect for Mehdi went down when he said he believes that Mohammed went to heaven on a flying horse.
Definitely not a comedian or satirist but a hard-hitting interviewer up there with Jon when Jon gets serious. I’ve watched his stuff since his days on Up Front on Al-Jazeera before he went to MSNBC and was repeatedly impressed.
How did someone like Clarence come to be? Was he bullied or something, or just a massive self serving ghoul from birth?
Behind the Bastards has some episodes on him. It’s been a while so I don’t fully recall, but my memory of it was that he was always kinda gross and misogynist, and he was also self serving in hus choices. Those choices didn’t always make him the right wing shitbag that he is now, since he originally was part of the Black Panthers.
After some time working for black Civil rights, he saw more money on the republican side and also saw hypocrisy on the democratic side. He said something to the effect of ‘They’re all racists, but at least Republicans are racist to your face/honest about it’(hey that sounds familiar…)
Again I remember money being a big part of it, so I’ve chalked him up to just being a selfish asshole who fought for causes once that would help himself and that made him look like he was on the right side of history once.
He didn’t really ever work for civil rights, he’s been the token “good one” on the court his entire tenure.
I was talking about his earlier days before being in the court, where he was inspired by Malcom X and the Black Panthers, though he seemed more interested in the hard militarized image of them:
inspired by the Black Panthers.”
“He dressed like them. He talked like them. He had a beret. He had Army fatigues and he had the Army boots,” Gordon Davis, a former classmate, recalls in the above clip.
Thomas had a poster of Malcolm X in his dorm room. He reportedly boasted that he had read all of the activist’s speeches and, at one time, could have quoted some of them by heart. Thomas was not alone in his frustration with racial injustice at the time.
“I had evolved from being hopeful to being pissed off. A lot of young people in America was pissed off,” Orion Douglass, another of Thomas’ former classmates, says in the clip. “And they weren’t seeking a reconciliation, okay? They were seeking a coup, to change the whole thing.”
Edit but you’re probably right that he never worked toward it. I kinda recall him being a lawyer for a while and thought he may have back then, but I could be remembering wrong.
He’s obsessed with the image of authority and power, the black Panthers just happened to be humbling the state of California and the federal government generally. Ie. Hes am art collector that cares about the price not the content.
Completely agree.
hi it’s me, Clarence!
Take the deal man!
If only. =(
I’ll take one for America
at least you got chicken
Good, now let’s watch this supposedly corrupt bribe taking devoid of integrity man turn down a million dollars a year for every reason in the book other than his legacy and integrity which he does not have or so I’ve heard.
I think that’s the whole point. He knows Thomas won’t take the money. It’s not about the money.
Oliver is just using the money as bait, so when Thomas says “I’m not taking the money because my job is about being just and whatever.”, he can fire back by pointing out everything that was discussed in the video.
Best case scenario, Thomas takes the money and retires, then Biden appoints a Democratic-leaning judge to fill the spot and bring more balance to the Supreme Court.
Worse (and most probable) case, Thomas ignores the offer for as long as possible. Pretends like it never happened. Then when someone eventually asks about it, he can play dumb or list whatever bullshit high-horse reasoning he wants, which Oliver can then point out the obvious hypocrisy and that’s that.
I think you mean John Oliver.
Thanks, edited. My mind was in two places when i wrote my comment.
Best case is that he does a Scalia/RBG - or better yet, a Slough/Wood/Daronco/Vance/Roll/Feuerstein then gets replaced by a progressive after the Republicans pull their transparent bullshit then lose the election and a material amount of public support.
I’m being facetious. It doesn’t matter whether he takes it or not, people claiming he has no integrity will not see refusal as a sign of integrity. So the whole circus surrounding this offer is nothing more than a circle jerk sham. It’s a show for the congregation, like speaking in tongues.
He wouldn’t do it because he wants to stay in power to harm liberals
Too close to the election. Republicans will just block a Biden nomination until after the election, in the hopes of another Trump nominee.
Why would you post an old story?
Mon Feb 19 2024.
At 10 am.
You think this hasn’t already been posted on every news comm here?
Probably because the episode was just released this morning for free on YouTube for everyone who doesn’t have HBO.
Everyone doesn’t have a MAX subscription
So we just reeeepost anytime we want? That’s not like Reddit at all…
Do you mean can we post about something that most people just heard about today? Why yes, yes we can!
Why don’t you be a little more condescending about it though? That’ll really give us that classic reddit vibe!
I just heard about the moon landing. Should I post articles about that everywhere too?
There’s that sparkling wit again! Since the moon landing happened about 55 years ago most people already know about it. Well, except for you apparently. The John Oliver story was just released for most people to see today, so it is still a topical event worth posting about.
Now, you should really get off your phone, recess is almost over and teacher will get mad if you’re late to class
https://apnews.com/article/moon-landing-private-odysseus-nasa-14dfdc76176f9f7a6a68a099c98bbbb9
Lander ‘alive and well’ after company scores first US moon landing since Apollo era
Seems fairly new to me.
Edit: There is a recent moon landing. Probably not the one poster was referring to.
Damn. You’re just way too cool for me.
You picked the strangest hill to die on…
https://apnews.com/article/moon-landing-private-odysseus-nasa-14dfdc76176f9f7a6a68a099c98bbbb9
Lander ‘alive and well’ after company scores first US moon landing since Apollo era
This one?
Ha! Touche, my friend. Well played
The parent post gave a reason this story is relevant again and you read that as “repost anytime we want”.
And they’re the only person that even mentioned it. Not even OP said anything about it.
The article is from Monday. I don’t know what day you think it is.
Thats literal bribery
Oliver himself during the episode exclaims his shock that such a stunt was legal, but indeed it is. Bribing Supreme Court Justices is, in effect, legal.
It’s closer to a job offer. Resigning would be a personal rather than an official act.
Bribery requires that the incentive is to illicit an action that is an official duty of the held office. Resignation is not an official duty. It is legally, under federal law, not a bribe.
And here is the law. At a glance, yeah, there was no bribe. It was not corrupt, it was not asking for an official action, and even if it were an official action, it was not an illegal action. https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-18-crimes-and-criminal-procedure/18-usc-sect-201/
Not bribery if you’re no longer a judge
