Ron DeSantis: My Supreme Court Picks Would Be Just Like Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito

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.

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 bombshell investigative reports by ProPublica that found they’d accepted lavish trips from Republican megadonors who had business or business interests before the high court. Neither Thomas nor Alito reported these trips. And Thomas’ mother still lives rent-free in a house purchased by billionaire Harlan Crow, who footed the bills for decades of travel by Thomas.

DeSantis was one of several GOP presidential hopefuls to speak at Friday’s event ― South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy were also there ― but he was the only one who talked about his plans for the Supreme Court.

He knew his audience. Former President Donald Trump wooed conservatives ahead of his 2016 election by promising to put their favorite picks onto the court. He even released a shortlist of potential Supreme Court nominees that was full of conservative candidates. That messaging won him the support of powerful legal organizations like The Federalist Society.

After Trump became president, The Federalist Society essentially fed him a pipeline of conservative court picks for his entire time in the White House. All of Trump’s choices for the Supreme Court are Federalist Society members. Virtually all of his appeals court judges are, too. A number of his district court picks are also members.

DeSantis is clearly angling to be the candidate who’d be the best for conservatives — even better than Trump — in terms of the courts. When right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt last week asked DeSantis if he’d commit to picking people for federal court seats who are like Trump’s three Supreme Court justices, DeSantis took a shot at the former president.

“Well, actually, I would say we’ll do better than that,” he replied.

“I mean, I respect the three appointees he did, but none of those three are at the same level of Justices Thomas and Justice Alito,” DeSantis said. “I think they are the gold standard, and so my justices will be along the lines of a Sam Alito and a Clarence Thomas.”

GOP presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis delivers remarks at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference Friday in Washington.

During his remarks Friday, the Florida governor warned about progressive groups that have called for expanding the Supreme Court.

“The left knows they have lost control of the court, and they don’t like it,” DeSantis said. “If they’re able to sweep in ’24, they’re going to pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices. You may have 13 people on the Supreme Court after they get done with it.”

He added, “They’re hard at this effort of trying to lay the groundwork for delegitimizing our great conservative justices.”

Of course, progressive groups and Democratic lawmakers would argue that the court itself has already become delegitimized and is badly in need of reforms.

There’s the problem with its two “stolen” seats, 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.