Over the past few years, Americans have witnessed — and endured — bizarre story lines in American politics that have exceeded the wildest imaginings of pulp-fiction novelists, screenwriters and political cartoonists.
Really, who could have dreamed up Donald Trump and made him believable? Did anyone expect that, in the real world, a reality TV star would get elected president, proceed to cozy up to the Russians, disparage longtime allies, get himself impeached — twice — and then try to overturn the results of an election he lost?
And it is not just Trump. Congress now has a growing caucus of outlandish characters far more fit for dark satire than for responsible governance, including Ukraine-bashers Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn, creepy Matt Gaetz and pistol-packin’ Lauren Boebert.
And now, in case you thought things could not get weirder, we have Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Yes, the staid and stuffy highest court in the land has produced a genuine scandal.
While her husband has been hearing appeals brought before the court by Trump’s lawyers seeking to block lawsuits and investigations into the events surrounding the attack on the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, it turns out Ginni Thomas has been agitating to get Trump back into the White House and Joe Biden thrown out.
Mrs. Thomas is a right-wing true believer, which means she not only thinks the election was stolen from Trump, she also subscribes to many of the bizarre myths pushed by QAnon conspiracists. In recent days, it was revealed that she sent a flurry of emails to Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, urging him to keep fighting to overturn the election while expressing her fervent wish that “the Biden crime family” might end up incarcerated at Guantánamo Bay.
It is now abundantly clear that Ginni Thomas’ political shenanigans, including her attendance at the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol, make it imperative that Justice Thomas recuse himself from any case related to Trump and the Jan. 6 insurrection. Yet, as in a turgid political thriller, do not count on a main character doing the principled thing when the dark side of politics beckons.
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