John Oliver offers to pay Clarence Thomas $1 million a year to leave Supreme Court

Huzzah — the drought is over! On Sunday Last Week Tonight with John Oliver returned from their quirky November to February hiatus, and they kicked off the new season with a bang. The main story focused on the decades of grifting Clarence Thomas has been up to, namely the undisclosed gifts he’s received from GOP donors, not to be outdone by the income he has been disclosing… from a defunct business. None of this is breaking news, true. But between Last Week being off air a lot of 2023 due to the writers strike and this week being the season premiere, I’m fine with having a Last Year Tonight – SCOTUS Edition episode. Plus they really upped the ante by making Thomas an offer he (hopefully) can’t refuse. Oliver closed the show by offering to pay Thomas $1 million a year in exchange for Thomas leaving the Supreme Court. Plus they’re throwing in a $2.4 million luxury tour bus, the justice’s favorite mode of transportation, to sweeten the deal. Thomas has 30 days to accept:

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 f–k off the supreme court,” Oliver remarked. “The clock starts now — 30 days, Clarence. Let’s do this!”

[From The Guardian]

This is genius. Oliver is calling Thomas’s bluff — “you need money? I’ll be your new donor daddy!” — in the name of an actual good cause (unlike gutting affirmative action and women’s healthcare). The poor man has been trying to survive on only $298,500 a year from the court, he deserves the raise! **insert eyeroll here** It was a bold and brilliant move by Oliver, one that did not go unnoticed by his HBO bosses, it seems. The day after the show aired Oliver went to tweet out a YouTube video of it, something he always does on Mondays. But without telling Oliver, HBO says they have a new policy of not posting the video to YouTube until the end of the week. To boost Max viewership they say, but methinks this probably has to do with the HBO lawyers still being at loggerheads with Oliver. Which is a shame, because Oliver clearly said he was putting up his own money, not HBO’s. And there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that Thomas will ever accept anyway! No, I fear Thomas and the rest of the horsemen of the apocalypse are just getting started with their reign of terror. **insert sobbing here**

Photos credit: Avalon.red, Cover Images