MSNBC's Rachel Maddow joined the co-hosts of "The View" on Tuesday and said the Supreme Court is "flagrantly corrupt," which appeared to surprise co-host Sunny Hostin.
"The blatant corruption of a couple of these Supreme Court justices is John Roberts' problem. He is the chief justice, he has to police it to save his court and to save the legal system," the MSNBC host said.
Maddow and "The View" co-hosts discussed ethics concerns on the Supreme Court, specifically surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas, who has taken heat for accepting gifts from GOP donor Harlan Crow, and Justice Samuel Alito, who came under fire recently for flying an upside down American flag outside his home in the weeks following the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
Co-host Sunny Hostin questioned Maddow's statement, but the MSNBC host stood by it.
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"I work at MSNBC. If there was a member of my family lobbying the White House chief of staff, saying, ‘overturn this election result,’ you think they’d let me cover that election result, let alone give a binding judicial ruling on that election result?" she said. It was a reference to Thomas' wife, Ginni Thomas, who sent texts to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows urging him to challenge then-President Trump's 2020 election loss.
Behar questioned whether Roberts would do anything, arguing, "he's iffy."
The MSNBC host argued the Supreme Court had effectively already given Trump immunity, despite not yet issuing a ruling on his immunity claim, "because they’ve already delayed things so long that the stuff that he did in 2020, he’s not going to be tried for before he potentially gets back in the White House."
"The View" co-hosts recently praised the court after they ruled unanimously against a challenge to the abortion pill.
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"It does restore a little bit of my faith in the court," Hostin said on Thursday. "Because the legal standard is, do you have standing to bring a case? Can anybody bring a case in front of the Supreme Court? No. You have to prove that you have injuries resulting from it and so you’ve got a group of doctors and a group of citizens and all of these people bring this challenge to the FDA and say, we don’t want this pill."
Co-host Sara Haines said the ruling reminded her to remain faithful in the country's institutions.
"We focus so much on the hot topics, on the results, rather than the legal reasoning and always call the judges conservative or liberal. It’s about the interpretation of the law, so reminding ourselves to have faith in this judicial [system], especially the Supreme Court, because it’s easy to attack them like regular politicians, but we need to remain faithful in our institutions. That’s why so many of us are scared," she said.
Behar, however, was still skeptical of the Supreme Court after the ruling and said, "I don’t trust the whole thing."
"I don't trust the courts. I don't trust the extreme religious right … They want us in the kitchen with 10 kids that we can't feed," she said.
