CNN commentator: New York Times story on Alito flying ‘Stop the Steal' flag will erode my trust in the media, not the justice
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From the May 17, 2024, edition of CNN's CNN News Central
SARA SIDNER (HOST): I want to ask you gentlemen about some New York Times reporting that was pretty stark. It's showed that on Justice Alito's - at Justice Alito's house, there was a flag that was flying that was upside down, which usually is a sign of distress in the flag code, but it was widely used by Trump's ‘Stop the Steal' reporters [sic]. There is a picture of that flag. We have though learned that he has made a comment to The New York Times, Justice Alito saying, “I had no involvement whatsoever in flying of the flag." He emailed that to the Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor's use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs." But this was put up right after the 2020 election. And I'm curious, Scott, to you first, what do you think this will do to further potentially erode people's trust when you see something like that, no matter who placed it, was someone in his home who did so?
SCOTT JENNINGS (COMMENTATOR): It doesn't erode my trust. I mean, it's going to, I'll tell you what, it's going to erode my trust in the media and in the left because they're going to try to use this to come up with some garbage take that somehow Justice Alito is going to have to recuse himself from all these cases. They are going to go through the same character assassination of him, by the way, I know this guy, high character guy, that they go through on Clarence Thomas and any other conservative judge that casts decisions that they don't like. It's going to be total character assassination. It's totally unwarranted. It has nothing to do with anything. Alito is a high character person. And if they tried to go down the route of a character assassination here it's going to be a travesty, but I assume that's where we're headed.