Stephen King's Justice Samuel Alito Remark Takes Internet By Storm
By Billie Schwab Dunn
Pop Culture and Entertainment Reporter
May 18, 2024
Writer Stephen King has "no words" after learning an upside-down U.S. flag was flying outside the home of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, following the violent aftermath of the 2020 election.
The distress signal—used at the time by some supporters of former President Donald Trump to contest the election results—was spotted on Alito's lawn in Alexandria, Virginia, on January 17, 2021, The New York Times reported Thursday. In an email to the newspaper, Alito denied any involvement in flying the flag upside-down, claiming his wife, Martha-Ann, was solely responsible, the Times stated.
"A Supreme Court justice—Samuel Alito—flying an upside-down flag outside his house, indicating Stop the Steal. I have no words," horror author King posted to X, formerly Twitter. At the time of writing, his post had been viewed 702,700 times.
Despite a lack of evidence, Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed that his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden was due to widespread election fraud. The photograph of the inverted flag at Alito's home was captured just 11 days after a mass of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 while Congress was certifying Biden's win.
The Times report comes a few weeks after the Supreme Court heard arguments on whether Trump is protected by presidential immunity in his federal election subversion case. The High Court is expected to issue a ruling in the coming weeks.
Newsweek has emailed a spokesperson for King and the Supreme Court, for comment by Judge Alito and his wife Martha-Ann, on Friday.
King, who joined the Democratic Party in 1970 and is a vocal critic of Trump, often takes to social media to share his thoughts on various political issues—and Thursday was no different. People have taken to the comments to share their anger and frustration over the news.
"And the fact that Alito thinks it's all ok as long as he blames it on his wife is insane. Between Thomas and Alito, this is very, very bad," one person wrote.
"The [sic] is precisely why the Trump immunity case will get dragged out to the very last day of the Supreme Court's session," said another.
A third added: "And he doesn't recuse from any of the 1-6 cases. [angry emoji]"
Stephen King and United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito. King has weighed in to comment on an upside-down flag being displayed outside Alito's home. JOHN LAMPARSKI/ALEX WONG/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES
However, others disagree, justifying the upside-down flag hanging outside Alito's home.
"How dare others have opinions which differ from mine," a different X user commented.
"That's not what the upside-down flag means. It means 'distress.' You'd think your team could do some research," said another.
While an upside-down flag has traditionally been used as a call for help, in 2020 it took off as a symbol of Trump's "Stop the Steal" campaign.
"Everyone in America who cherishes our way of life oughta do the same," another person wrote.
The conservative justice said in a statement emailed to the Times that he "had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag" and that it was "briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor's use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs."
Alito is not the first justice to face questions over his potential partiality to the former president. Justice Clarence Thomas has also faced calls to recuse himself from Trump's immunity case after his wife, Ginni, said that she attended the former president's rally before the January 6 attack.
Thomas has also been questioned over his relationship with conservative figures like billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow, who, according to reports by ProPublica, has paid for several luxurious trips for Thomas and his wife. He defended their relationship in a statement: "Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable."
The Supreme Court adopted its first code of ethics in November 2023 following the scandals involving Thomas. The policies were met with swift criticism, however, for lacking a clear enforcement measure for how justices would be held accountable.
Pop Culture and Entertainment Reporter
May 18, 2024
Writer Stephen King has "no words" after learning an upside-down U.S. flag was flying outside the home of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, following the violent aftermath of the 2020 election.
The distress signal—used at the time by some supporters of former President Donald Trump to contest the election results—was spotted on Alito's lawn in Alexandria, Virginia, on January 17, 2021, The New York Times reported Thursday. In an email to the newspaper, Alito denied any involvement in flying the flag upside-down, claiming his wife, Martha-Ann, was solely responsible, the Times stated.
"A Supreme Court justice—Samuel Alito—flying an upside-down flag outside his house, indicating Stop the Steal. I have no words," horror author King posted to X, formerly Twitter. At the time of writing, his post had been viewed 702,700 times.
Despite a lack of evidence, Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed that his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden was due to widespread election fraud. The photograph of the inverted flag at Alito's home was captured just 11 days after a mass of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 while Congress was certifying Biden's win.
The Times report comes a few weeks after the Supreme Court heard arguments on whether Trump is protected by presidential immunity in his federal election subversion case. The High Court is expected to issue a ruling in the coming weeks.
Newsweek has emailed a spokesperson for King and the Supreme Court, for comment by Judge Alito and his wife Martha-Ann, on Friday.
King, who joined the Democratic Party in 1970 and is a vocal critic of Trump, often takes to social media to share his thoughts on various political issues—and Thursday was no different. People have taken to the comments to share their anger and frustration over the news.
"And the fact that Alito thinks it's all ok as long as he blames it on his wife is insane. Between Thomas and Alito, this is very, very bad," one person wrote.
"The [sic] is precisely why the Trump immunity case will get dragged out to the very last day of the Supreme Court's session," said another.
A third added: "And he doesn't recuse from any of the 1-6 cases. [angry emoji]"
Stephen King and United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito. King has weighed in to comment on an upside-down flag being displayed outside Alito's home. JOHN LAMPARSKI/ALEX WONG/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES
However, others disagree, justifying the upside-down flag hanging outside Alito's home.
"How dare others have opinions which differ from mine," a different X user commented.
"That's not what the upside-down flag means. It means 'distress.' You'd think your team could do some research," said another.
While an upside-down flag has traditionally been used as a call for help, in 2020 it took off as a symbol of Trump's "Stop the Steal" campaign.
"Everyone in America who cherishes our way of life oughta do the same," another person wrote.
The conservative justice said in a statement emailed to the Times that he "had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag" and that it was "briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor's use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs."
Alito is not the first justice to face questions over his potential partiality to the former president. Justice Clarence Thomas has also faced calls to recuse himself from Trump's immunity case after his wife, Ginni, said that she attended the former president's rally before the January 6 attack.
Thomas has also been questioned over his relationship with conservative figures like billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow, who, according to reports by ProPublica, has paid for several luxurious trips for Thomas and his wife. He defended their relationship in a statement: "Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable."
The Supreme Court adopted its first code of ethics in November 2023 following the scandals involving Thomas. The policies were met with swift criticism, however, for lacking a clear enforcement measure for how justices would be held accountable.
The ethics code, similar to the long-standing one to which lower courts are held, states that judges need to remain impartial and avoid political statements on issues that could be brought before them.
According to the Times report, which cited a list of guidelines that was handed to the Supreme Court staff, the court has warned its employees to avoid public political displays. The court's internal rule book also bans employees from displaying signs or bumper stickers.
According to the Times report, which cited a list of guidelines that was handed to the Supreme Court staff, the court has warned its employees to avoid public political displays. The court's internal rule book also bans employees from displaying signs or bumper stickers.
Farah Griffin: If Sotomayor flew upside-down flag GOP would call for her resignation
The Supreme Court justice views his fellow Americans with contempt, and not as citizens he's serving
By AMANDA MARCOTTE
By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
SALON
PUBLISHED MAY 18, 2024
Samuel Alito | An upside down American flag (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)
Add one more incident to the "shocking but not surprising" pile that grows
Add one more incident to the "shocking but not surprising" pile that grows
mountainously high in an era of rising fascism: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flew a flag at his house signaling support for the Capitol insurrection in the days after January 6, 2021.
The inverted American flag was a popular signal of support for Trump's lies about the 2020 election and the MAGA riot on the Capitol. As reported Thursday by Jodi Kantor of the New York Times, photographs and testimony from Alito's northern Virginia neighbors show an "upside-down flag was aloft on Jan. 17, 2021" at his home. At the same time, the Times notes, Alito unsuccessfully attempted to get the court to take a case undermining the 2020 election.
Republicans are rubbing people's noses in the fact that there's nothing the rest of us can do to stop them from advertising their fascist sympathies.
Advertisement:
Gross and undeniable in its meaning, of course. But Alito, who has never been interested in honesty with the public, offered a glib rebuttal, telling the New York Times, "I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag." Instead, he blamed his wife, saying she flew the inverted flag as a "response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs."
As Joe Scarborough on MSNBC retorted Friday morning, "nobody believes him." There's no universe, Scarborough noted, in which the upside-down flag is used as a way to throw the finger to neighbors you're in a spat with. This is Alito lying by omission. As Kantor swiftly discovered, the argument the Alitos were having with their neighbors wasn't over loud parties or defecating dogs, it was over Jan. 6, which the neighbors in question vociferously objected to. Martha-Ann Alito took offense to a neighbor who "displayed an anti-Trump sign with an expletive" around the election. Things escalated, and, as neighbors and documentary evidence show, the inverted flag was up in the days after the riot.
A more honest description of the conflict would be that the Alitos rejected their neighbor's right to express their political opinions freely. In order to convey their disapproval of this use of First Amendment rights, the Alito household sent a message of support to people who used violence in an attempt to destroy American democracy. As more than one commentator pointed out, Alito continues to run around pretending he's a champion of "free speech," but when his neighbors expressed an opinion held by most Americans, he (or his wife, if you believe him) responded with an endorsement of violence to end constitutional democracy as we know it.
When asked about this by Shannon Bream of Fox News on Friday, Alito doubled down on the faux outrage over curse words and claimed his wife only expressed support for the Jan. 6 rioters after neighbors said mean things to the couple about how violent insurrections are, in fact, bad.
As a reminder, four rioters and five police officers died as a consequence of the riot. Alito is unsubtly suggesting that those deaths somehow are less offensive than some kids seeing a curse word. Even then, his "logic" falls apart at first blush. After all, children visit the Capitol every day, yet Alito is apparently fine with it being subject to people breaking windows, smearing feces, shedding blood, and threatening murder — all with quite salty language, as the voluminous video evidence from that day shows.
Related
Samuel Alito scandal shows why conservative justices on the Supreme Court are so whiny
Additionally, Alito's snide dishonesty is insulting, and it is meant to be.
For someone who feigns outrage at curse words, he is basically throwing a big middle finger to all American citizens. He's not just rejecting his duty as a public official to uphold democracy, but sneering at the idea that he even owes an explanation to the people he was supposedly hired to serve, who pay his salary. He feels no need to put the effort into a better lie. After all, what are any of us little people going to do about it?
Advertisement:
Alito's quasi-denials operate as confessions, and not just of his and his wife's sympathies for fascist seditionists. His open contempt for the idea that he has to answer to anyone radiates through these fake excuses. It ends up underscoring why he and the Mrs. were so enthused about Trump's attempted coup: They agree with the foundational sentiment that the American people should not be in control of their government. As Adam Serwer recently wrote in the Atlantic, Alito "expects the public to silently acquiesce" to his authority, "without scrutiny, criticism, or protest." Alito sees us as subjects whose duty is to bend the knee to him and his preferred leaders, like Trump. With this flag gesture, he's signaled support for violence as the enforcement mechanism.
Again, shocking but not surprising. Alito has long taken a "tough on crime" attitude that leads to almost no sympathy for the rights of criminal defendants — unless those defendants are aligned with him politically. When it comes to Trump and the Jan. 6 defendants, Alito has expressed a view that the criminal charges are illegitimate. As Scott Lemieux of Lawyers, Guns & Money noted, Alito's belief that he and his are above scrutiny of the law was evident even during Alito's confirmation hearing in 2006. When Alito was questioned about his participation in an organization dedicated to keeping Princeton's student body white and male, his wife threw a massive public tantrum, weeping giant crocodile tears and stomping out of the hearing. Their self-perception is not "public servant," so much as "medieval royalty."
As Don Moynihan wrote in a recent newsletter, far too many Republicans and their apologists seem to excuse this far-right radicalism because the people who are expressing it have expensive clothes, elite educations, and fat investment portfolios. He notes that Speaker of House Mike Johnson, R-La., is laying "the groundwork for another coup attempt in plain sight," while the media's outrage is far more focused on "scruffy students" expressing their perfectly democratic right to disagree with their country's foreign policy. Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., signaled support for an organization, the Proud Boys, whose leaders are currently in prison for violent sedition.
I have one quarrel with Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo.'s claim that Gaetz is trying to be "subtle" with his message. As with Alito, the dog-whistling is no longer about trying to smuggle fascist messages to supporters without the press or liberals noticing. Republicans are rubbing people's noses in the fact that there's nothing the rest of us can do to stop them from advertising their fascist sympathies. Their impunity is part of the argument against democracy. By flaunting their untouchability, they're treating the end of democracy as a done deal. If people as unapologetically hateful can't be removed from office, their behavior suggests, then democracy is dead already.
And yes, it's hard not to look at these self-satisfied moral monsters without feeling despair. But no one should fall for their tricks. Because of Trump, anti-democratic forces have had some major victories, but the fight is far from over. President Joe Biden's presence in the White House shows that democracy prevailed in 2021. Trump's ability to mount another coup will be hamstrung by the fact that he's out of office and has fewer levers of power. That's why people like Gaetz and Alito are so focused on demoralizing their opposition. They know Trump's ability to end democracy depends heavily on whether or not people fight back. They haven't won until they've successfully scared people into thinking it's already over.
Amanda Marcotte is a senior politics writer at Salon and the author of "Troll Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself." Follow her on Twitter @AmandaMarcotte and sign up for her biweekly politics newsletter, Standing Room Only.
The inverted American flag was a popular signal of support for Trump's lies about the 2020 election and the MAGA riot on the Capitol. As reported Thursday by Jodi Kantor of the New York Times, photographs and testimony from Alito's northern Virginia neighbors show an "upside-down flag was aloft on Jan. 17, 2021" at his home. At the same time, the Times notes, Alito unsuccessfully attempted to get the court to take a case undermining the 2020 election.
Republicans are rubbing people's noses in the fact that there's nothing the rest of us can do to stop them from advertising their fascist sympathies.
Advertisement:
Gross and undeniable in its meaning, of course. But Alito, who has never been interested in honesty with the public, offered a glib rebuttal, telling the New York Times, "I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag." Instead, he blamed his wife, saying she flew the inverted flag as a "response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs."
As Joe Scarborough on MSNBC retorted Friday morning, "nobody believes him." There's no universe, Scarborough noted, in which the upside-down flag is used as a way to throw the finger to neighbors you're in a spat with. This is Alito lying by omission. As Kantor swiftly discovered, the argument the Alitos were having with their neighbors wasn't over loud parties or defecating dogs, it was over Jan. 6, which the neighbors in question vociferously objected to. Martha-Ann Alito took offense to a neighbor who "displayed an anti-Trump sign with an expletive" around the election. Things escalated, and, as neighbors and documentary evidence show, the inverted flag was up in the days after the riot.
A more honest description of the conflict would be that the Alitos rejected their neighbor's right to express their political opinions freely. In order to convey their disapproval of this use of First Amendment rights, the Alito household sent a message of support to people who used violence in an attempt to destroy American democracy. As more than one commentator pointed out, Alito continues to run around pretending he's a champion of "free speech," but when his neighbors expressed an opinion held by most Americans, he (or his wife, if you believe him) responded with an endorsement of violence to end constitutional democracy as we know it.
When asked about this by Shannon Bream of Fox News on Friday, Alito doubled down on the faux outrage over curse words and claimed his wife only expressed support for the Jan. 6 rioters after neighbors said mean things to the couple about how violent insurrections are, in fact, bad.
As a reminder, four rioters and five police officers died as a consequence of the riot. Alito is unsubtly suggesting that those deaths somehow are less offensive than some kids seeing a curse word. Even then, his "logic" falls apart at first blush. After all, children visit the Capitol every day, yet Alito is apparently fine with it being subject to people breaking windows, smearing feces, shedding blood, and threatening murder — all with quite salty language, as the voluminous video evidence from that day shows.
Related
Samuel Alito scandal shows why conservative justices on the Supreme Court are so whiny
Additionally, Alito's snide dishonesty is insulting, and it is meant to be.
For someone who feigns outrage at curse words, he is basically throwing a big middle finger to all American citizens. He's not just rejecting his duty as a public official to uphold democracy, but sneering at the idea that he even owes an explanation to the people he was supposedly hired to serve, who pay his salary. He feels no need to put the effort into a better lie. After all, what are any of us little people going to do about it?
Advertisement:
Alito's quasi-denials operate as confessions, and not just of his and his wife's sympathies for fascist seditionists. His open contempt for the idea that he has to answer to anyone radiates through these fake excuses. It ends up underscoring why he and the Mrs. were so enthused about Trump's attempted coup: They agree with the foundational sentiment that the American people should not be in control of their government. As Adam Serwer recently wrote in the Atlantic, Alito "expects the public to silently acquiesce" to his authority, "without scrutiny, criticism, or protest." Alito sees us as subjects whose duty is to bend the knee to him and his preferred leaders, like Trump. With this flag gesture, he's signaled support for violence as the enforcement mechanism.
Again, shocking but not surprising. Alito has long taken a "tough on crime" attitude that leads to almost no sympathy for the rights of criminal defendants — unless those defendants are aligned with him politically. When it comes to Trump and the Jan. 6 defendants, Alito has expressed a view that the criminal charges are illegitimate. As Scott Lemieux of Lawyers, Guns & Money noted, Alito's belief that he and his are above scrutiny of the law was evident even during Alito's confirmation hearing in 2006. When Alito was questioned about his participation in an organization dedicated to keeping Princeton's student body white and male, his wife threw a massive public tantrum, weeping giant crocodile tears and stomping out of the hearing. Their self-perception is not "public servant," so much as "medieval royalty."
As Don Moynihan wrote in a recent newsletter, far too many Republicans and their apologists seem to excuse this far-right radicalism because the people who are expressing it have expensive clothes, elite educations, and fat investment portfolios. He notes that Speaker of House Mike Johnson, R-La., is laying "the groundwork for another coup attempt in plain sight," while the media's outrage is far more focused on "scruffy students" expressing their perfectly democratic right to disagree with their country's foreign policy. Meanwhile, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., signaled support for an organization, the Proud Boys, whose leaders are currently in prison for violent sedition.
I have one quarrel with Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo.'s claim that Gaetz is trying to be "subtle" with his message. As with Alito, the dog-whistling is no longer about trying to smuggle fascist messages to supporters without the press or liberals noticing. Republicans are rubbing people's noses in the fact that there's nothing the rest of us can do to stop them from advertising their fascist sympathies. Their impunity is part of the argument against democracy. By flaunting their untouchability, they're treating the end of democracy as a done deal. If people as unapologetically hateful can't be removed from office, their behavior suggests, then democracy is dead already.
And yes, it's hard not to look at these self-satisfied moral monsters without feeling despair. But no one should fall for their tricks. Because of Trump, anti-democratic forces have had some major victories, but the fight is far from over. President Joe Biden's presence in the White House shows that democracy prevailed in 2021. Trump's ability to mount another coup will be hamstrung by the fact that he's out of office and has fewer levers of power. That's why people like Gaetz and Alito are so focused on demoralizing their opposition. They know Trump's ability to end democracy depends heavily on whether or not people fight back. They haven't won until they've successfully scared people into thinking it's already over.
Amanda Marcotte is a senior politics writer at Salon and the author of "Troll Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself." Follow her on Twitter @AmandaMarcotte and sign up for her biweekly politics newsletter, Standing Room Only.
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