Late-night host gives justice, under fire over undisclosed donations, 30 days to accept offer, which includes a tour bus

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.

    • ArbiterXero@lemmy.world
      54·
      10 months ago

      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 😝

      • Wrench@lemmy.world
        233·
        10 months ago

        Or we could legislate checks and balances, so that we can hold powerful people accountable for corruption.

        • ArbiterXero@lemmy.world
          12·
          10 months ago

          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

        • metaStatic@kbin.social
          7·
          10 months ago

          and who exactly would pass legislation holding themselves to account for crimes they have definitely committed?

      • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
        131·
        10 months ago

        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.

    • BenadrylChunderHatch@lemmy.world
      12·
      10 months ago

      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”.

    • epyon22@lemmy.one
      121·
      10 months ago

      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.

      • khan_shot_1st@lemmy.worldEnglish
        253·
        10 months ago

        It’s almost as if money shouldn’t be the only motivating factor to accepting this kind of position…

  • MrJameGumb@lemmy.world
    641·
    10 months ago

    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.

    • Dexx1s@lemmy.world
      641·
      10 months ago

      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.

    • deur@feddit.nl
      13·
      10 months ago

      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.

      • vividspecter@lemm.ee
        13·
        10 months ago

        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.

  • lennybird@lemmy.worldEnglish
    615·
    10 months ago

    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.

    • moistclump@lemmy.world
      2·
      10 months ago

      Is Mehdi Hasan same similar humour? Or you thinking Hasan Minhaj who’s Patriot Act show was Jon and John vibes.

      • lennybird@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        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.

    • chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      26·
      10 months ago

      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.

      • Madison420@lemmy.world
        12·
        10 months ago

        He didn’t really ever work for civil rights, he’s been the token “good one” on the court his entire tenure.

        • chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          7·
          10 months ago

          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.

          • Madison420@lemmy.world
            7·
            10 months ago

            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.

  • mister_monster@monero.townEnglish
    152·
    10 months ago

    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.

    • SecretSauces@lemmy.world
      14·
      10 months ago

      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.

      • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
        2·
        10 months ago

        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.

      • mister_monster@monero.townEnglish
        11·
        10 months ago

        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.

  • kablammy@sh.itjust.works
    4·
    10 months ago

    Too close to the election. Republicans will just block a Biden nomination until after the election, in the hopes of another Trump nominee.