John Oliver offers to pay Clarence Thomas $1 million a year to leave Supreme Court


Huzzah — the drought is over! On Sunday Last Week Tonight with John Oliver returned from their quirky November to February hiatus, and they kicked off the new season with a bang. The main story focused on the decades of grifting Clarence Thomas has been up to, namely the undisclosed gifts he’s received from GOP donors, not to be outdone by the income he has been disclosing… from a defunct business. None of this is breaking news, true. But between Last Week being off air a lot of 2023 due to the writers strike and this week being the season premiere, I’m fine with having a Last Year Tonight – SCOTUS Edition episode. Plus they really upped the ante by making Thomas an offer he (hopefully) can’t refuse. Oliver closed the show by offering to pay Thomas $1 million a year in exchange for Thomas leaving the Supreme Court. Plus they’re throwing in a $2.4 million luxury tour bus, the justice’s favorite mode of transportation, to sweeten the deal. Thomas has 30 days to accept:

The British-born, progressive comedian’s offer came after a steady drumbeat of media investigations in the previous several months established that Thomas failed to disclose that political benefactors bought him lavish vacation travel and real estate for his mother. Thomas also failed to disclose — as required — that he allowed school fees for a family member to be paid off and had been provided a loan to buy a luxury motor coach, all after openly complaining about the need to raise supreme court justices’ salaries.

As a result, Thomas’s impartiality came into question after he sided with the contentious ruling that eliminated the federal abortion rights once provided by the Roe v Wade case.

He also recently listened to arguments over whether Donald Trump can be removed from states’ ballots in the presidential election after the former president’s supporters — whom he told to “fight like hell” — staged the January 6 attack at the US Capitol in Washington DC. Thomas resisted pressure to recuse himself from matters pertaining to the Capitol attack, even though his wife, Ginni Thomas, is a conservative political activist who has endorsed false claims from Trump and his supporters that the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden was stolen from him — which in turn fueled January 6.

Oliver alluded to all of those circumstances as he extended his lucrative offer to Thomas, saying: “Lot on your plate right now, from stripping away women’s rights to hearing January 6 cases … and you deserve a break, you know, away from the meanness of Washington. So you can be surrounded by the regular folks whose lives you made demonstrably worse for decades.”

The host suggested that Thomas could upgrade his “favorite mode of travel” by signing a contract requiring him to step down from the supreme court in exchange for $1m annually from Oliver along with the tour bus, which is outfitted with a king-sized bed, a fireplace and four televisions.

Oliver joked that Thomas possibly feared that making such a trade might attract negative judgment from one of his top benefactors: the Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow, who was reported to have maintained a private collection of Nazi memorabilia that included a pair of paintings by Adolf Hitler.

But Oliver said: “That’s the beauty of friendship, Clarence. If they’re real friends, they’ll love you no matter what your job is. So I guess this might be the perfect way to find out who your real friends actually are.

“So that’s the offer — $1m a year, Clarence. And a brand new condo on wheels. And all you have to do … is sign the contract and get the f–k off the supreme court,” Oliver remarked. “The clock starts now — 30 days, Clarence. Let’s do this!”

[From The Guardian]

This is genius. Oliver is calling Thomas’s bluff — “you need money? I’ll be your new donor daddy!” — in the name of an actual good cause (unlike gutting affirmative action and women’s healthcare). The poor man has been trying to survive on only $298,500 a year from the court, he deserves the raise! **insert eyeroll here** It was a bold and brilliant move by Oliver, one that did not go unnoticed by his HBO bosses, it seems. The day after the show aired Oliver went to tweet out a YouTube video of it, something he always does on Mondays. But without telling Oliver, HBO says they have a new policy of not posting the video to YouTube until the end of the week. To boost Max viewership they say, but methinks this probably has to do with the HBO lawyers still being at loggerheads with Oliver. Which is a shame, because Oliver clearly said he was putting up his own money, not HBO’s. And there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that Thomas will ever accept anyway! No, I fear Thomas and the rest of the horsemen of the apocalypse are just getting started with their reign of terror. **insert sobbing here**

Photos credit: Avalon.red, Cover Images

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32 Responses to “John Oliver offers to pay Clarence Thomas $1 million a year to leave Supreme Court”

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  1. Pinkosaurus says:

    Ginny should be indicted for insurrection and Clarence is corrupt to his core, but I’ll settle for both of them disappearing from public forever.

  2. FancyPants says:

    Thomas went on ONE vacation that cost $500,000, so unfortunately, $1,000,000/year will not be enough to maintain his current lifestyle. [I don’t even know if I’m being sarcastic or not.]

    • Donna says:

      My first thought is Thomas is probably making a lot more than that but we just don’t know about it. I sure wish he would take the offer.

      • ML says:

        Same, Donna. He’s seemingly in a protected place as well—he can be as corrupt as he wishes if there’s no real way to hold him accountable. *sob*

    • Felicity Fox says:

      Selling a vote surely brings in way more than $1M a year. Being in a powerful position can get you a lot of cash, favors, and gifts.

  3. Lolo86llf says:

    One million dollars a year to get rid of corrupt grifting Clarence Thomas is a very small price to pay to protect Women’s right to choose not to mention to conserve our democracy in the US. Thomas and his wife are enemies of our free democratic nation and they must go away.

  4. Amy T says:

    Aside from my grandparents, and with regrets to Prince Harry, this move just made John Oliver my favorite immigrant/British import.

  5. Lynn says:

    If only we had listened to Anita Hill 33 years ago…

    • Nicole says:

      A lot of us listened, but he played the Dem Senators like a fiddle. There’s a great podcast called Slow Burn that talks about Thomas’s life and career.

      • terra says:

        I was three years old at the time, but when I learned about it, I believed it immediately. I voted for Biden because there was no possible way I was voting for Trump, but I still wish there had been another viable option. I don’t think Biden is a bad man, I just think he’s from a different generation that doesn’t value the seriousness of what it’s like to be a woman in this world.

        I’m sure he’s better than he was at the time of the hearings, but it’s the principle of the matter. I’ll absolutely be voting for him again, but I do long for the day when I get to be excited about a candidate again.

    • Blithe says:

      Some of us DID listen to Anita Hill and to the other women who spoke out. Some of us also listened to the women who were willing to speak out but who were denied the opportunity to speak publicly before Congress. No surprises here.

    • Truthiness says:

      We listened. Pretty much like we listened to Christine Blasey Ford. Neither Thomas nor Kavanaugh should be justices.

    • Lisa says:

      We listened. The people who were responsible didn’t listen

  6. Becks1 says:

    We aren’t lucky enough for him to accept.

  7. Kirsten says:

    Not only should HBO/Max publicize this, they should offer their own money to cover the $1million. I can’t imagine anything that would get them new subscribers so fast.

    I love John Oliver.

  8. Sam says:

    I love John Oliver!! 😂👏

  9. Lau says:

    1 million a year is not nearly enough for a grifter like Clarence Thomas.

    • liz says:

      That is the sad truth of it all. There would have to be another zero at the end of the number for it to even register with Thomas. $10mil/year and he might consider it. But not $1mil. And Oliver knows that. The offer is absolutely in good faith, but he knows that Thomas will never accept.

  10. Ravensdaughter says:

    John Oliver is the opposite of Clarence Thomas. He cannot be bought or hushed up with posh titles! He turned down a knighthood a few years ago (granted, at the feeler stage, but still).
    ..and now he’s ours -US citizen!-and we really need him!…

    • Jk says:

      I have so much respect for John Oliver!! He is a man of integrity and not afraid to speak up.
      I have not watched every single segment but the one about the British royal family and the one about medical debt in the US were really eye opening.

  11. GamerGrrl says:

    From a PR standpoint, moving the YT clips to Thurs is brilliant… decades ago. It took a day, but every major news outlet started talking about this by Tues a.m. Before YT, people would have been calling their cable company to get HBO so they could watch for themselves. Now, they go to YouTube. But Max is kidding themselves if they think this hasn’t been pirated and posted by now.

  12. Aidee Kay says:

    Sometimes I wish John Oliver were an actual news anchor person on a legit news program and not doing “comedy news,” b/c he and his team are 100x smarter and more in touch with what is important to report in the world than actual news shows. HOWEVER, at the end of Sunday’s ep, when he closed with the $1M/year offer plus the new luxury motor coach, I remembered why Oliver has to be hosting a comedy news show — so that he can be a STUNT QUEEN. I love that he can finish his journalistic reports with ridiculous, hilarious stunts that often underscore the most salient points of the reporting. Outstanding!!!!

  13. J.Ferber says:

    That’s out of the question. Clarence gets paid more in freebies by his political friends who influence his Supreme Court decisions. What is Oliver THINKING?

  14. Izzy says:

    I love John Oliver. He’s such a chaos gremlin. I love to see it.