Biden takes dig at Clarence Thomas over luxury trips

President Biden took a jab at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in a new interview over his reported luxury trips funded by billionaire friends.

Speaking with The New Yorker, Biden refers to Thomas as “the guy who likes to spend a lot of time on yachts.”

The off-hand remark came in a larger conversation about the future of abortion rights in the country. Biden told reporter Evan Osnos that he wants to push to “pass Roe v. Wade as the law of the land,” which he said would require Democrats to win control of the House and gain seats in the Senate.

“You’re seeing the country changing,” Biden told Osnos, signaling he was confident at the prospects of codifying Roe, with just “a few more elections like we’ve seen taking place in the states.”

In June 2022, Roe was overturned by the Supreme Court, sending the issue of abortion rights back to the states. Since then, 21 states have passed restrictions on abortion, but voters have repeatedly supported measures to protect abortion access.

Osnos noted in his piece that Thomas argued in a concurring opinion that the legal rationale behind overturning Roe could be applied to other issues, including same-sex marriage, the decriminalization of homosexuality and access to contraception. He asked Biden if he thought those protections might be undone by the conservative justices.

Biden told Osnos, “I don’t think there’s a majority to go there,” but, “I think that a couple on the court would go considerably further,” including “the guy who likes to spend a lot of time on yachts.”

Osnos writes he asked whether Biden was referring to Thomas, and Biden grinned.