JCN Launches Campaign Highlighting Ketanji Brown Jackson Saying She Doesn't "Understand" Clarence Thomas

Campaign Features New $1.5 Ad Buy

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) launched a new $1.5 million ad buy highlighting Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson's statement that she does not understand Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court's longest serving justice and the nation's second black justice.  

The ad highlights Created Equal, a documentary that tells the story of Thomas's remarkable life in his own words. JCN's ad encourages Judge Jackson and viewers to watch the film and learn more about the ways Thomas has been unfairly attacked for 30 years. The ad, "Misunderstood," will air nationally and in Washington, D.C. on cable TV and digitally starting March 23, 2022. 

Statement from JCN President Carrie Severino: 

"For more than thirty years the Left has targeted Justice Thomas because he thinks for himself.  Now that he is the Court's leading intellectual voice, he is in the Left's crosshairs more than ever as they wage a war to intimidate and undermine him.  Everyone should watch Created Equal so that they can see who the real Justice Thomas is, rather than just the Left's nasty caricature."

Ad Script for
"Misunderstood":                                                                                                                   

Background:

Justice Thomas' Decades-Long Record of Defending the Constitution and Shaping Legal Thinking In The U.S.

For 30 years Justice Clarence Thomas has tirelessly defended the Constitution in the face of vile and baseless attacks from the left. 

JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS' STERLING RECORD ON THE COURT

• Justice Thomas' role in shaping legal thought in the country and his fidelity to the Constitution has drawn attacks from the left for diverging from their approved ideology.
• Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Biden's nominee for the Court has said that she does not "understand" Justice Thomas because he does not think like most people she knows.
• Justice Thomas has a long and storied record shaping legal thought in the United States over the last 30 years.
• Clarence Thomas has consistently shown foresight, identifying key areas of the law where the Supreme Court could enhance its fidelity to the Constitution. 
• Justice Thomas has never been afraid to go it alone when he believes his colleagues have gotten it wrong. 
• Many of Justice Thomas' eloquent dissents have not been aimed at winning a given case but rather at shaping legal thinking decades down the road.  
• In recent years, Justice Thomas has become more empowered on the Court, especially since Justice Barrett replaced Justice Ginsburg. 
• If Chief Justice Roberts is in the minority in a case, Justice Thomas is the senior justice and decides who writes the majority opinion.
• Experts have noted the Court has moved in Justice Thomas' direction on abortion, gun rights, separation of powers, and other issues in recent years.
• Justice Thomas' influence is felt throughout the federal court system as many of his former clerks now hold or have held prominent positions at the highest level of government, including the federal judiciary. 

THE LEFT'S ABHORRENT SMEAR TACTICS

• In February 2022, the Washington Post outrageously wrote that Justice Thomas' rulings resemble "the thinking of White conservatives."
• After critics blasted the paper for their racist characterization, the paper issued a clarification. 
• Vile race-based attacks on Justice Thomas are nothing new. Such attacks have often taken the form of political cartoons, including depictions of the justice as a lawn jockey, shining Justice Scalia's shoes, dressed in Klan robes, and connecting him to pornographic references.
• Rep. Karen Bass suggested that Justice Thomas wasn't an authentic Black voice in 2016.
• Liberal MSNBC anchor Joy Reid has referred to Justice Thomas as "Uncle Clarence."
• Sunny Hostin, host of the liberal ABC program The View, once asserted that Justice Thomas didn't "really represent the Black community" because of his beliefs. 

In The Enigma of Clarence Thomas (2019), Corey Robin wrote that "Thomas sees something of value in the social worlds of slavery and Jim Crow that justifies a recurrence to that Constitution . . . ."

SOURCE Judicial Crisis Network