In a rare conservative attack on former president Donald Trump's Supreme Court picks, Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis claimed on Monday that they fell short of the "gold standard" established by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Hugh Hewitt, a prominent conservative pundit, claimed that Trump's selection of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court "struck three home runs."
"Are you going to promise the Republicans that your judges would be like the Trump judges as you travel the country?" enquired Hewitt.
With the justification that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett were not role models for justices, DeSantis rejected the question's premise:
Actually, I think we'll perform better than that. I mean, I appreciate the three individuals he chose, but none of them compares to Justices Thomas and Alito. I consider them to be the gold standard, thus Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas would be examples of my justices. And in Florida, I took over a state supreme court that was extremely active and liberal—possibly the most liberal in the nation. But in my first month in office, I was able to choose conservative justices to replace three of the four liberals. Since then, I've been able to schedule a lot more appointments. Consequently, we now have the nation's most conservative state supreme court.
Even some of Trump's most ardent right-wing opponents have complimented his judicial picks as excellent legal experts, although some have chastised them for occasionally deviating from the court's conservative, originalist side.
The most significant instance of this may have occurred in 2020, when Justice Gorsuch joined the liberal wing in concluding that the 1964 Civil Rights Act shielded homosexual and transgender Americans from prejudice based on their identification. Nevertheless, the majority of Trump's picks have made conservative activists happy, particularly since their votes last summer were crucial in overturning Roe v. Wade.
Hugh Hewitt, a prominent conservative pundit, claimed that Trump's selection of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court "struck three home runs."
"Are you going to promise the Republicans that your judges would be like the Trump judges as you travel the country?" enquired Hewitt.
With the justification that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett were not role models for justices, DeSantis rejected the question's premise:
Actually, I think we'll perform better than that. I mean, I appreciate the three individuals he chose, but none of them compares to Justices Thomas and Alito. I consider them to be the gold standard, thus Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas would be examples of my justices. And in Florida, I took over a state supreme court that was extremely active and liberal—possibly the most liberal in the nation. But in my first month in office, I was able to choose conservative justices to replace three of the four liberals. Since then, I've been able to schedule a lot more appointments. Consequently, we now have the nation's most conservative state supreme court.
Even some of Trump's most ardent right-wing opponents have complimented his judicial picks as excellent legal experts, although some have chastised them for occasionally deviating from the court's conservative, originalist side.
The most significant instance of this may have occurred in 2020, when Justice Gorsuch joined the liberal wing in concluding that the 1964 Civil Rights Act shielded homosexual and transgender Americans from prejudice based on their identification. Nevertheless, the majority of Trump's picks have made conservative activists happy, particularly since their votes last summer were crucial in overturning Roe v. Wade.
