A reporter with MS NOW decided to take an aggressive approach with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as he was walking through the House side of Congress, peppering him with a relentless barrage of questions while he chuckled. The reporter, Mychael Schnell, asked Thomas why he was at the House. When Thomas asked Schnell to repeat the question, she responded by asking him who he was there to meet with.
“Oh, nobody,” Thomas said with a laugh. The reporter then tossed out another question, asking the justice if he was there to meet with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA). Thomas answered in the negative. “Then what are you doing up here today?” Schnell pushed. “Oh, just walking,” he said, turning to smile at the reporter and laugh. Schnell then pressed Thomas about any possible meetings he might have there.
“None that I’ll tell you about,” Thomas chuckled, clearly having fun toying with Schnell. “Tomorrow will be a big day at court, huh? Final decisions?” Schnell asked him. “I guess so,” Thomas responded. Schnell then asked if he would give her a little information concerning the decisions. “Uh, nope!” he replied with another laugh.
According to a report from The Daily Caller, Schnell asked him once again why he was there and what the meeting was about. “Anyone in House GOP Leadership? That’s who has offices in there,” Schnell asked. At that point in the encounter, Thomas stopped answering and only chuckled in response. “You wanna answer any of them? Any comment at all?” Schnell pressed. “No,” Thomas laughed.
He then paused for a moment to shake the hand of a police officer who was thanking him before he continued down the hallway. Thomas actually became a popular internet GIF for a similar response to a TMZ reporter who spotted him coming out of The Capital Grille after lunch in 2016. The justice laughed while the reporter asked him a series of questions, before he asked the reporter why he was photobombing him.
When the reporter introduced himself, Thomas said, “I know you. I’m just giving you a hard time.” According to the report, Thomas is the second-longest serving U.S. Supreme Court Justice. If he serves on the bench for two more years, he will become the longest to sit on the bench. He has also appeared 10 times before Congress to offer testimony and was last seen in Congress in 2010.
The comment section of The Daily Caller story was full of support for Thomas and his service to the country in the highest court in the land. “He will be hard to replace. On one hand, you don’t want to lose him from the Court. On the other, he is getting up there in years, and you don’t want him to retire (or die) with a Democrat President in office,” one user said.
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“One thing you can count on Clarence Thomas for is a common sense constitutional decision. Another is his love of God, family, and country,” someone else wrote. “There are only a few people I would cross the street to shake their hand, he’s one of them,” another said. “Justice Thomas is a national treasure. We desperately need to retain the senate this November,” someone else commented.
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video