He's No Nino!

The Last Word on Chief Justice John Roberts, political animal.

Matt Jordan

Mar 24, 2025

Transcript

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Phony tough

At some point recently, an advisor close to Democrat leadership called for Alpha males to step up and speak for the party. The problem, the party is bereft of such men. The first to step forward is Astronut Senator Mark Kelly. He displayed his manliness by selling his Tesla in a fit of rank stupidity.

Make that double stupidity. He bought the thing because he either believed the green scammers, or his one of them. This makes his replacement vehicle an even more stupid purchase. People like Kelly would have you believe or profess an EV is “greener” than a V8 SUV (which is what he bought, in order to feel like a man). But they’re not, and never will be.

I’ve said many times on this program, right about the time an EV is beginning to make up for their waste of fossil fuels just being built, it’s time to replace the batteries. And the green counter starts all over again, with the EV being far dirtier than my 2016 Ram V8.

Thanks for playing Mark. We hope the penis envy is a passing thing.

Then sloucher Chuck Schumer and creepy Tampon Tim started talking about kicking MAGA asses and forcing the GOP to vote the right way or pay the price. These two knuckleheads couldn’t beat up a daisy if they were tag teaming.

AOC is out there trying to be the Alpha male in their stead. She’s more believable in the roll and still embarrassing to watch. Bernie is touring with her. But he is close to going to the same farm they sent Joe Biden to.

It’s all too funny.

Let’s get down to cases!

Upon seeing this piece, a bunch of people might be tempted to say, oh, you saw this on Beck!

Yes, Glenn Beck and others have hit on this, but I have been saying all this about Roberts for some time now. Here’s one of the earlier mentions. And there is more to unpack on the subject.

Roberts was not a lawyer by trade when he was selected for the Supreme Court. He was a glad-handing, back-slapping. grinning political animal. And he was good at it. This doesn’t disqualify him to serve on the Court, but I always thought appointing him directly as Chief Justice was a stretch.

It is absurd to think of someone like Roberts marshaling the efforts of Ruth, Nino and Clarence in any meaningful way. Assigning him as an associate justice? Sure. But there were, and are, better thinkers on the bench who could have been moved to the chief’s chair. My position has been vindicated a few times since his arrival at SCOTUS.

His reasoning and ego mark him as an amateur among his fellow justices. His “reasoning” in the case of Obamacare (make that outright interference in the process), for example, was atrocious. It was clear that he was enjoying the spotlight 1/6th of the economy shining on the court, and he wanted it to shine on him. He saw a chance to be co-president by helping to push through a spending bonanza. He stepped off the bench (metaphorically) and edited the White House’s argument. Then declared the most obvious abuses of Obamacare to be constitutional.

Here is the operative paragraph I keep referring to.

In July of 2012, in a move the New Yorker called a "singular act of courage", Chief Justice Roberts decided he wanted to be a co-president for a few hours and missed the opportunity to gut the whole mess when he stepped off the bench, into the well and made the administration's argument for them. The question was whether the penalty for not participating in Obamacare was a tax or a fee. On consecutive days the administration's lawyers argued that 1) it was absolutely a fee and not a tax 2) it was absolutely a tax and to a fee. The reason is because of the dubiousness of the governments authority to cause people to buy something they don't need under the penalty of law. Only in Orwell's crazy world should this thinking survive. Roberts would have been correct to laugh the parties right out of the court room. But he didn't. He chose to nail his name into the pages of history and leave us to take this monstrosity apart piece by piece while the misinformation continues to gush from the White House and a sycophantic press. With each step, we will have to fight the straw man misdirection and hysterical wailing.

Roberts has occasionally sided with the Left of the Court for reasons that vary in quality. Roberts’ weak, lazy, almost clannish handling of the Dobbs leak was unforgivable.

So, it was annoying and disappointing, but not surprising, when he decided to wade where he ought not last week.

The issue

Last week, DC District Chief Judge Boasberg wildly overstepped his constitutional authority on the issue of ejecting Tren de Aragua scum from our country. That stands as an empirical fact even if you agree with the plaintiffs in this case.

First, it was a joke that he even considered the case. And in doing so he demonstrated how activists like himself allow themselves to be used as pawns in political games. Devoid of real argument, the Left needs the pliable judges to legislate from the bench on absolutely every issue.

Boasberg further abused his position when he started issuing operational orders to THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH on their handling of the gang members so far. Turn the planes around! (Was he joking?!?) How may passengers aboard the planes? How much fuel? When did they take off? The correct answer to all of those questions, Mr. Judicial Branch Man is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. No matter how many plaintiffs are standing before you, you don’t have sway over the Executive Branch’s operation.

A judge may issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) in response to a plaintiff, but he has NO RIGHT to inject himself into existing operation reality. In this case the judge did order the Trump administration to hold all flights. But TRO’s have no weight at all until they are committed to the written record. The Judge knows this, but whined about it anyway when at least one flight left before he memorialized his royal fiat.

Trump reacted to this in his typical Trumpy fashion. He called the judge a luntic (arguable) and a liberal activist (correct). Trump said the man should be impeached.

So far, we have a judge in his own court issuing proclamations. We have Trump defending his own actions and rendering an opinion. The opinion doesn’t matter in that Trump cannot impeach anyone and there are not numbers in congress that would get anyone anywhere near impeachment. But the valid players are making their case.

Then John Roberts inexplicably decides to speak out. He does so in an intellectually questionable fashion and legally troubling way as well. Let’s just look at a few problems with his statement.

Regarding the call for impeachment, Trump IS a player in an active case. So is Boasberg. John Roberts is not. So by weighing in on the question, and not being a member of the House of Representatives, all Roberts did was add yet another unqualified opinion to the discussion. Thanks, John.
In his statement, Roberts took a stand that might be expected of a pre-law student, before the professor blasted him out of his seat. Roberts said that for 200 years we have never impeached a judge for an opinion. Here’s why that is an anti-intellectual assertion:
1. The fact that “we” do anything for any length of time does not make that thing right. We had slavery for almost 250 years. By Roberts’ thinking we should have continued to get our two biggest cash crops the same way.
2. The case in question does not center solely around an “opinion”. Boasberg was issuing demands of a separate branch of government that went beyond his authority and beyond the scope of the discussion at hand. Just because we’ve never argued such behavior in an impeachment proceeding before, is not reason to conclude we never could or should.
The statement from Roberts was impulsive and reckless.
1. Impulsive because it was issued in an unofficial way, but intended to carry the color of his “authority”. He was suddenly jumping into a cat fight to ‘stick up’ for an activist judge who seems perfectly capable of speaking for himself. In fact, Boasberg is trying to be a bit of a bully. That’s a fool’s errand considering that he’s dealing with DJT.
2. Roberts was reckless for wading into a controversy that will almost certainly be before the Supreme Court in a matter of months, even weeks. He won’t recuse. His ego won’t allow for that. But he should, now that he is a player in the case.

Considering the ham-handed way John Roberts takes these weird positions and actions, I can’t help but think it’s the politician in him that simply cannot resist a bit of self-promotion. It may be reflexive. It is not the behavior we expect from a Chief Justice. Other justices are far from perfect. It isn’t too uncommon for a judge to make an off-hand remark only to regret it later. But as with this case, the Obamacare debacle and the Dobbs leak, I think one can safely opine that John Roberts was not the best choice for Chief Justice.

And that’s not hindsight. Many of us thought so then.

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