Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took an epic swipe at Senator Cory Booker for his staged ‘Spartacus’ moment during confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh.
As you’re probably well aware, Booker went through a thoroughly staged moment in which he tried to play a rebel ‘breaking’ committee rules to deliver truth unto the people.
The congressman from New Jersey threatened to release confidential documents, insisting that what he was doing was illegal while baiting Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn into taking action against him.
However, the committee had previously cleared the release of the documents and Booker was doing nothing more than grandstanding as a rebellious rule-breaker, knowing full well what he was doing was perfectly legit.
“This is about the closest moment I will ever have in my life to an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment,” he declared, seriously, and without any indication that what he was saying was comedy gold.
William Burck, a lawyer working for former President George W. Bush, said he was surprised by Booker’s “histrionics” because “we had already told him he could use the documents publicly.”
Thomas couldn’t help but join widespread mockery of the hapless Booker during a conversation with the Federalist Society airing on C-SPAN.
The longest-tenured Justice currently presiding, and the second African-American to serve on the nation’s highest court, slapped Booker down for lacking ‘honor’ and elicited laughter from the crowd when he jeered his ‘Spartacus’ moment.
“Honorable – if we could use that word about more people who are in public life, people who actually ask the questions at confirmation hearings, instead of ‘Spartacus,'” Thomas said to a pleased crowd.
From last week, Justice Clarence Thomas: “Honorable – if we could use that word about more people who are in public life, people who actually ask the questions at confirmation hearings, instead of ‘Spartacus’…”
Watch full @FedSoc conversation – 7pm ET on C-SPAN2 #SCOTUS pic.twitter.com/PNgIofgvJC
— CSPAN (@cspan) September 12, 2018
Even Thomas himself let out a chuckle and made a reference to the movie 300 which features the iconic line, “This is Sparta!”
It’s funny because Booker actually thinks he was acting like a warrior when in reality he was simply acting like a fool.
Amazingly, Booker has continued to insist that he broke the Senate rules when in fact, he did not.
“Here we stand on Monday morning and I have now released hundreds of pages of committee confidential documents against their rules, because they’re sham rules,” he boasted earlier this week.
Such a rebel.
[imkrelated]
We half expect him to start wearing a leather jacket on his way to the Capitol while riding a custom, tripped-out Vespa scooter with a license plate that reads ‘IMSPARTY.’
Thomas isn’t the only person making Booker look foolish. Social media users have been working overtime to make sure the ‘Spartacus’ meme sticks to him for a very long time.
The Washington Free Beacon put together this tremendous video comparing Booker to Seinfeld’s George Costanza, who in one episode tried his hardest to turn into the ‘bad boy.’
.@CoryBooker: I’ve never been the bad boy. pic.twitter.com/ZAsvK3tcnj
— Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) September 7, 2018
Clarence Thomas is, of course, no stranger to controversial confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. His name was dragged through the mud as political opponents brought in Anita Hill, who had accused him of sexual harassment in the early 1990s. Hill’s story had several holes and little basis in fact.
Why do Kavanaugh and Thomas share such similarities in their confirmation hearings decades apart, with the ‘histrionics’ of Democrats who are willing to stoop to any level to stop them?
Perhaps Thomas himself explained it best.
“I admit to being unapologetically Catholic, unapologetically patriotic, and unapologetically a Constitutionalist,” he said.
Kavanaugh is all of these and that’s why Democrats despise him.
Thomas fought through all of that to earn his spot on the Supreme Court. If anybody can claim the mantle of ‘Spartacus,’ it’d be him.
