A Newsmax host just blamed Ketanji Brown Jackson for the SCOTUS leak

As a general rule, I try not to put too much (read: any) stock in anything the nattering nabobs of Newsmax have to say about, well, anything. Despite having “news” in its name, the network is essentially broadcast media’s version of a chain email you got from your estranged uncle with a subject line like “FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: IMPORTANT!!” and then a mildly racist cartoon inside. Still, sometimes it’s worth pointing out just how absolutely unhinged and detached the network is, if only to highlight the fact that there are people who slurp this stuff up unreservedly, and then barf it back out into the world as if it’s the word of god from on high. And that ... well, that’s pretty bad.

Take, for instance, host Grant Stinchfield, who spent his Tuesday broadcast delivering a full-throated endorsement of the extremely “dog catches car” conservative pity party — one which posits that, despite having succeeded in their decades-long project to deny women bodily autonomy by rolling back Roe v. Wade, right wingers are nevertheless the real victims here because a draft of that decision was leaked from the Supreme Court. (Cue the “oh no, not the norms, anything but that” pearl-clutching chorus.) The real issue, per Stinchfield and his ilk, is not that millions of people will be put in very real, very immediate mortal danger due to a lack of vital medical care, but that the public learned about it ahead of time.

But never fear! Stinchfield is on the case, and he’s already got a working theory and everything. It’s simple, you see: The scary Black lady did it.

Uh oh, his “first suspect”?? Sounds pretty super duper serious, you guys!! Except ... Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson isn’t a Supreme Court justice yet. Not even a teeny tiny bit. She will be in a few months, after Justice Stephen Breyer officially steps down at the end of this term, but for the time being, she has about as much to do with the draft ruling as you or I do, which is to say: nothing at all.

Putting aside the compelling theory that the leak came from a conservative hoping to ossify the 5-4 vote reflected in the draft, or the fact that no laws were likely broken in the process, Stinchfield’s fear-mongering over a woman who hasn’t even started her new job yet is par for the course when it comes to the ongoing right-wing effort to delegitimize Jackson’s role on the court — an effort that doesn’t so much dip its toes in the waters of racist insinuation as it does splish-splash around in them like a galoshes-wearing toddler after a rainstorm.

In any case, this is what Stinchfield, a man who frets over gay leprechauns and who contorts himself into grotesquely antisemitic pretzels, has chosen to freak out about this time. And it’s only a matter of time before his audience gets the hint and starts freaking out about it too.