DeSantis Hits Trump Over His Supreme Court Picks: None ‘At the Same Level’ of Thomas and Alito

Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis issued a rare conservative critique of former president Donald Trump’s appointments to the Supreme Court on Monday, arguing that they fell short of the “gold standard” set by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

During an appearance on conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, Hewitt asserted that Trump had “hit three home runs with his Supreme Court appointments” of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

“Are you going to make the same kind of pledge to the Republicans as you go around the country that your judges will be like the Trump judges?” asked Hewitt.

DeSantis rejected the premise of the question, arguing that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett were not model justices:

Well, actually, I would say we’ll do better than that. I mean, I respect the three appointees he did, but none of those three are at the same level of Justices Thomas and Justice Alito. I think they are the gold standard, and so my justices will be along the lines of a Sam Alito and a Clarence Thomas. And in Florida, I inherited a very liberal state supreme court, maybe the most liberal in the country, very activist. But I was able to replace three of the four liberals my first month in office with conservative justices. I’ve since been able to make a number of appointments since then. So we now have the most conservative state supreme court in the country.

Trump’s judicial appointees have been praised by even some of his harshest critics on the right as brilliant legal scholars, but some have criticized them for occasionally breaking with the conservative, originalist wing of the court.

Perhaps the most notable instance of this came in 2020, when Justice Gorsuch joined the liberal wing in deciding that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protected gay and transgender Americans from discrimination on the basis of their identity.

Still, Trump’s appointees have largely left conservative activists pleased, especially after their votes proved decisive in overturning Roe v. Wade last summer.

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