Sam Alito, Who Does Things People Don't Like, Still Unsure Why People Don't Like Him [View all]

[In It to Win It]

Balls and Strikes

On Monday morning, the journalist Lauren Windsor released recordings of conversations she had with Justice Samuel Alito at a dinner held by the Supreme Court Historical Society last week. During her exchanges with the justice, Windsor made a series of conservative-wackjob-coded statements about the role of the Supreme Court, religion, and political polarization, teeing up the justice to agree with her. “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the Left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end,” she told Alito. “I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning.”

Alito responded, “I think you’re probably right.”

It’s not surprising that a right-wing ideologue would be caught on a hot mic cosigning a desire to end political polarization by achieving right-wing dominance. In what may be a more revealing moment, though, Windsor described the Court as in the midst of a “period of turmoil” and asked Alito how the it could recover from the erosion of public trust.

“I wish I knew,” Alito began, immediately before claiming to know the culprit. “It’s easy to blame the media, but I do blame them because they do nothing but criticize us.” Alito concluded, “They have really eroded trust in the Court.”

Link to tweet

Unable or unwilling to do any self-reflection, the justice placed sole responsibility for his bad reputation at the feet of the media. At no point did Alito stop and think about why the media is criticizing the Court, or contemplate the substance of the media reporting that lowered the public’s opinion of it. Alito has repeatedly exhibited resentment for any effort to hold him accountable for his use and abuse of the extensive powers granted to him as a Supreme Court justice. But if people don’t like the Court once the media informs them of the Court’s behavior, it’s not the receipt of information that’s the problem.