Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Friday that if he wins the presidency in 2024, his picks for the Supreme Court would be just like hard-line conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
“As president, I’ll nominate and appoint justices to the Supreme Court in the mold of Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito,” DeSantis said to applause at the conservative Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Washington.
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The GOP governor also vowed to defend both justices against “scurrilous attacks” by “the media and by left-wing groups” over their apparent ethical lapses.
“I stand with Justice Thomas. I stand with Justice Alito in the face of these attacks,” he said.
The “attacks” he was talking about aren’t exactly scurrilous; both justices are the subjects of , a term sometimes used in reference to Republicans helping Trump confirm two of his picks by blocking confirmation of President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland and then ramming through Amy Coney Barrett just days before the 2020 presidential election ― as millions of people were casting votes for Joe Biden.
And not only did the court’s 6-3 conservative supermajority last year break from long-standing precedent to overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, but its two most conservative justices — Thomas and Alito, DeSantis’ model judges — hinted that they’d like to revisit other landmark rulings to potentially revoke more rights, including the 2015 decision that granted same-sex couples the constitutional right to get married.
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