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THE INSURRECTIONISTS IN OUR MIDST  
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David Kurtz
May 17, 2024
Talking Points Memo
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_ Featured insurrectionists this week: Samuel Alito ... Matt Gaetz
... Greg Abbott. _

"Sam Alito - Jurisimprudence" , by DonkeyHotey licensed under CC BY
2.0

 

Blame It On The Wife

Though we certainly didn’t need it, yesterday was a reminder that
convicting, defeating, and incarcerating Donald Trump won’t by
itself rid us of the lawless insurrectionists that now populate the
Republican Party, Congress, and the Supreme Court.

In a breathtaking report
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the NYT’s relentless Jodi Kantor, neighbors of Supreme Court Justice
Samuel Alito provided evidence that the American flag was flying
upside down outside his Alexandria, Virginia home in the run-up to
Jan. 20, 2021 inauguration of Joe Biden – an unmistakeable emblem of
protest heavily adopted by the Big Lie/Stop the Steal crowd in the
weeks after the 2020 election.

Remarkably, Alito admitted to the NYT via email that the incident had
happened but blamed his wife for it, claiming she had been personally
offended by a neighbor posting what we are led to believe was a
“Fuck Trump” sign or similarly blunt message in their own yard:

I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag. It was
briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of
objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.

Given how thin-skinned, peevish, and quick to offend Alito himself is,
I suppose it would be no surprise if his wife were similarly
small-minded. Note how Alito’s statement, while it blames his wife,
also obliquely defends her – “objectionable and personally
insulting”! – and does nothing to disavow what she did, the
message it sent, or the way it undermined his already-compromised
position on the high court.

Alito spends much of his time harnessing perceived personal slights to
high principle and running around tilting at windmills. I don’t know
anything of his spouse, and she has little public profile – so we
are left to wonder if they are kindred spirits in that regard. But
even the kind of people who get in fights with their neighbors and
hold themselves in such high regard that they conflate their own
wounded egos with foundational principles don’t usually find
themselves defending or touting insurrections.

As things now stand, the wives of two of the Supreme Court justices
– Virginia Thomas and Martha-Ann Alito – have either publicly
organized, backed, or expressed support for the effort to subvert the
results of the 2020 election.

My only gripe with the NYT story is that it quickly shifts from the
facts of what happened to an analysis of the ethical implications for
a sitting Supreme Court justice, including whether the Supreme
Court’s own rules apply to the justice themselves, whether they
should be subject to the standards of everyone else in the federal
judiciary, and the whys and wherefores of judges not doing anything to
appear overtly partisan.

Please. It’s all so precious. The more time we spend splitting hairs
over the ethical niceties of this or that particular episode, the
harder it is to see the big picture.

This wasn’t merely a matter of the household of a sitting Supreme
Court justice improperly demonstrating a partisan preference in a
public way. This was a bold declaration of affinity for and alignment
with the smoldering insurrection led by a president of the same party
that had just been put down but which still loomed as a threat to
civic order, the peaceful transfer of power (which at that point had
still not yet happened), and the rule of law.

All Alito can muster in response is to blame his wife.

Stand Back And Standby

While Justice Alito was dancing around the issue, Rep. Matt Gaetz
(R-FL) was saying the quiet part out loud. He posted a photo of
himself standing behind Donald Trump at the courthouse in Manhattan
where his hush money trial is being held and echoed
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own famous line to the Proud Boys from the 2020 presidential debate
stage:

Many of the leaders of the Proud Boys, who led the attack on the
Capitol, are now in jail
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being convicted on seditious conspiracy charges.

The message to Gaetz’s 2.5 million followers on X/Twitter was clear:
He stands with the Proud Boys and whether it’s the next election or
the current trial, he and the MAGA hoards are prepared to tear it all
down – or at least posture about planning to do so.

Tell me again how the insurrection was quashed, nothing really
happened, and it’s now over.

Abbott Pardons Gunman Who Killed BLM Protester

The third example from yesterday is not directly related to Jan. 6,
and yet it’s unmistakably connected.

As he has long promised, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) pardoned
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gunman who was convicted of shooting and killing an armed Black Lives
Matter protester in Austin in the summer of 2020.

The BLM protests and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol are inextricably
intertwined in the Republican mind. Jan. 6 was _their_ BLM protest.
Why are all the Jan. 6 rioters being prosecuted while Biden lets the
BLM thugs walk free, they argue disingenuously. Abbott was sending his
own message about the relative value of the lives of the gunman and
the protester, about which side Abbott himself is on, and what his
real values are.

So there you have it in a nutshell. From top to bottom, the Republican
Party has become the insurrectionist party. It extends from the
executive to the legislative to the judicial. It’s all encompassing
and unapologetic. There is value in such clarity, if we choose to see
it.

David Kurtz is TPM's executive editor and Washington Bureau chief. He
oversees the news operations of TPM.

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* Insurrection in Washington
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* Samuel Alito
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* Matt Gaetz
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* Greg Abbott
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