The Daily Signal - The Great Story of Clarence Thomas

Episode Date: January 23, 2020

Justice Clarence Thomas is famously quiet on the Supreme Court. But a new movie, "Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words," is drawn from an exclusive interview with Thomas. Filmmaker Michael Pack shares what he learned about Thomas. We also cover the following stories: President Trump discusses the impeachment proceedings. Twenty-one attorneys general call on the Senate to not validate House Democrats' impeachment push. Utah bans conversion therapy for minors. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Today, our colleague Jarrett Stetman will interview Michael Pack, who directed, wrote and produced the new documentary about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, created equal, Clarence Thomas, in his own words. That movie is set to hit theaters on January 31st and will later be released on PBS. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple. Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. Well, as the impeachment trial reached day two, President Trump was wrapping things up at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He gave a press conference and gave some comment about the trial.

I'd love to go. Wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that be beautiful? I don't know. I'd sort of love sit right in the front row and stare at their corrupt faces. I'd love to do it. I don't know. Don't keep talking because I may, you know. may convince me to do it. Do you think Sipollone and Sopelo would want you there? I think they might have a problem. I think they might.

And by the way, I think they've all. I think they've done a really good job. And I think the other side has so lied. I watch the lies from Adam Schiff. He'll stand. He'll look at a microphone and he'll talk like he's so aggrieved. These two guys, these are major sleaze bags. They're very dishonest people.

Very, very dishonest people. Representative Adam Schiff, one of the key figures in the houses in proceedings and now a House manager speaking in the Senate made the case against Donald Trump on the Senate floor via C-SPAN. Only one day after Special Counsel Mueller testified before Congress empowered in the belief that he had evaded accountability for making use of foreign support in our last election, President Trump was on the phone with the President of Ukraine, pressing him to intervene on President Trump's behalf in the next election.

Schiff also, using an ABC news clip, suggested Trump's words to the media showed he was advocating for Ukraine to take action via C-SPAN. There was no question that President Trump intended in pressing the Ukraine leader to look into his political rival. Even after the impeachment inquiry began, he confirmed his desire on the south lawn of the White House, declaring not only that Ukraine should investigate Biden, but that China should do the same. Let's see what he said.

Well, I would think that if they were honest about it, that start a major investigation into the Biden. It's a very simple answer. They should investigate the Bidens because how does a company that's newly formed and all these companies, and by the way, likewise, China should start an investigation into the Bidens. Because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine. Now, the day after that July 25th phone call, President Trump sought confirmation that President Zelensky understood his request to announce the politically moated investigations and that he would follow through.

Senator Lindsay Graham, Republican of South Carolina, also gave spirited remarks in a press conference via C-SPAN. So here's what I saw yesterday. I saw an effort to ask the Senate to ignore it. every privilege that President Clinton was able to exercise, Nixon was able to exercise, and to suggest to the Senate that an independent judiciary really is a non-player. If I were the president, I wouldn't cooperate with these guys at all. I'm the same guy that said, you can't fire Mueller.

I encouraged him to work with Mueller. Mueller is a man of the law, Schiff, Nadler, and Pelosi impeached this president in 48 days. I wouldn't give them the time of day. They're on a crusade to destroy this man, and they don't care what they destroy in the process of trying to destroy Donald Trump. I do care. So to my Democratic colleagues, you can say what you want about me, but I'm covering up. nothing. I'm exposing your hatred of this president to the point that you would destroy the institution. Adam Schiff, one of the House impeachment managers, rejected the idea of trading with Republicans

for witnesses. Some Republicans had suggested allowing Democrats to subpoena John Bolton, the former national security advisor, in exchange for Republicans getting Hunter Biden to appear. Schiff said there's no chance. This isn't a fantasy football trade, he said. This isn't. We will offer you this if you give us that, or offer a witness irrelevant and immaterial with no relevant testimony, but a witness that allows us to smear a presidential candidate if you give us a witness. That's not a trade. Trials aren't trades for witnesses. 21 state attorneys general, all Republicans, urge the Senate to oppose impeaching President Trump. This impeachment proceeding threatens all future elections and assesses.

establishes a dangerous historical precedent, the Attorney's General wrote. That new precedent will erode the separation of powers shared by the executive and legislative branches by subjugating future presidents to the whims of the majority opposition party in the House of Representatives. Thus, our duty to current and future generations commands us to urge the Senate to not only reject the two articles of impeachment contained in House Resolution 755, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, as lacking in any plausible or reasonable evidentiary basis, but also as being fundamentally flawed as a matter of constitutional law. The District of Columbia is suing President Trump's inaugural committee and his private company over alleged improper payments.

D.C.'s Attorney General, Carl Racine, filed a lawsuit Wednesday, alleging that Trump's inaugural committee paid over a million dollars for overpriced space at the Trump International Hotel during the 2017 inauguration. He argues that that broke the district's nonprofit laws. Racine said the inaugural committee was guilty of blatantly and unlawfully abusing non-profit funds to enrich the Trump family, and that as a nonprofit, the committee was legally required to avoid wasteful expenses. Well, the Trump organization pushed back releasing a statement that said, AG's claims are false, intentionally misleading, and riddled with inaccuracies. The rates charged by the hotel were completely in line with what anyone else would have been charged

for an unprecedented event of this enormous magnitude, and were reflective of the fact that the hotel had just recently opened, possessed superior facilities, and was centrally located on Pennsylvania Avenue. Utah is now the 19th state to ban so-called conversion therapy for minors, a top target of LGBT activists who oppose such therapy being available. The Salt Lake Tribune reports, the professional licensing rule, which officially took effect Tuesday, bars therapists and counselors

from attempting to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of a young person. A state licensed therapist who violates the rule could face sanctions for unprofessional conduct. Up next, Jared's interview with Michael Pack, director of a new

documentary about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. If you're tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger and bigger government, it's time to partner with the most impactful conservative organization in America. We're the Heritage Foundation, and we're committed to solving the issues America faces. Together, we'll fight back against the rising tide of homegrown socialism, and we'll fight four conservative solutions that are making families more free and more prosperous. But we can't do it without you.

Please join us at heritage.org. We are now speaking to filmmaker Michael Pack. Pack is the director of the soon-to-be-released documentary, created equal Clarence Thomas, in his own words. The movie is set to come out on January 31st. Michael, thanks so much for joining us on The Daily Signal. Thank you for having me. So first off, explain the thread of the documentary.

I mean, Clarence Thomas wrote a memoir of my grandfather's son many years ago, but it seems that many Americans don't know a lot about Clarence Thomas the man. Does a documentary delve into his childhood, his upbringing, his past? It does. I mean, exactly. Most Americans don't know about it. And really the purpose of the film is to tell his whole story and to dispel the myths and fabrications that have grown up over the years.

So the format of the film is called Created Equal Clarence Thomas in his own words because it's mainly Justice Thomas speaking directly to camera and telling his story from birth all the way up to today. And it's based on a 30-hour interview that I conducted with Justice Thomas and Ginny, his wife, and only them. And you don't hear it. There are no other interviews. He tells his story, as he sees it from the very beginning, right to camera.

There are recreations. There's archival footage. There are stills. But there's no other interview. You hear the story from Justice Thomas because, It's a great story, and in talking to people, he was overwhelmingly the best to tell it. He's a great storyteller with a wonderful voice. Yeah, that really will be something, especially as Thomas is notably quiet on the Supreme Court,

getting to actually hear this from Thomas himself, seems to be one of the most interesting aspect of this documentary. Now, one thing that really struck me is certainly about Thomas's life is his kind of political transformation. I mean, obviously had a rich experiences growing up. I grew up in the, at the time, still segregated state of Georgia, obviously some harrowing times there. But he really had a political transformation. I mean, he really was as a young man, a man of the left. I think he even had supported the Black Panthers and ended up as an appointee of the Reagan

administration, obviously an appointee to the Supreme Court of Republican President George H.W. Bush. Can you kind of explain that transformation? Because it seems kind of wild on its face. Well, that's right. I mean, that's one of the reasons it's a great story, because it's a story, not only a Horatio Algae story, of going from dire poverty and segregation, as you said,

to the highest court of land, but of these political, emotional, spiritual changes. And he's very articulate about it. As you say, he was born in the South. He was born in Pinpoint, just outside of Savannah, a Gala, Gichi area. So he grew up speaking a dialect, a Gichi dialect, not even English. They were dirt poor.

His mother worked in a crab factory. But, you know, they had a lot to eat. It was relatively idyllic. And then she moved to Savannah, where she worked as a maid and took care of Justice Thomas and his brother. But she just couldn't make ends meet. He was hungry. He was cold in the winter. She'd take him to school.

He'd wander the streets. It was really dire. poverty of a kind of few experience and in the midst of the segregated south. So then when he was about eight, she brought him to her father, his grandfather to raise, because she realized she couldn't take care of them. And that is what turned Justice Thomas' life around. His grandfather, who was poor, nearly illiterate, but he had a small home heating oil business. He gave Thomas and his brother a decent home, discipline, hard work, values.

he had converted Roman Catholicism. He sent them to parochial school, also a segregated school, but run by Irish nuns, who gave him more discipline, a great education. And that really turned his life around from the sort of drifting in poverty to this new path. And he was so successful, he wanted to study to be a priest. And he entered seminary. And he would have been one of the first African-American priest in Savannah. Anna, but as you implied, or as you said, he became disenchanted with all that.

It was the late 60s. And then one notorious incident, he was watching the Martin Luther King being shot on TV in 68, and one of the seminary and said, I hope that son of the dies. And that was just too much for Justice Thomas. There was just too much racism there. The church was doing too little about civil rights. and then he flipped and felt, no, this is all wrong, and he decided he lost his vocation.

He said he wanted to leave the seminary when he told his grandfather, his grandfather kicked him out, the only home he had ever known, and he was adrift. And he became an angry black man. He felt race and racism explained everything. His grandfather was a sucker. But he was on his own. He had to go wherever he could. He happened to have a full scholarship at Holy Cross,

college in Worcester, Massachusetts, Catholic school. And he went up there, and there he took, as you said, in the black radicalism of the 60s. He helped form the black student union, engaged in walkouts. As you said, he invited a Black Panther to come speak on the campus. And as Thomas said, they were supporters of everybody who was in your face, Angela Davis, Huey Newton, whomever. And then a large part of the film is Justice Thomas is turning away. from that. Recapturing his faith, coming back to Catholicism, his feeling, his discovery that all the programs on the left were not working, especially busing a nearby Boston and affirmative action,

and a lot of the ideas and anti-Americanism of black radicalism no longer appealed to him. And he started to see through it and drifted to the right until, as you say, he finally went to work for the Reagan administration in the 80s and worked at first in the Civil Rights Division Department of Education and then the EEOC. And then finally he was nominated by George H.W. Bush for the Supreme Court and had that extremely contentious confirmation battle. But from the time he went to work for Reagan and was a public figure, he was battling people who didn't agree with them.

You know, other civil rights leaders, people on the left, people who said, as he says in the documentary, that he was the wrong kind of. to black man. So it culminated in the hearing, and that's a very dramatic story, and he tells it in a very moving way, and then he talks about his jurisprudence on the Supreme Court. So you're right. It's a very complex story. The story, it's hard to understand if you don't hear it directly from Justice Thomas, which viewers will be able to do. Of course. What made you tell this story of Clareich Thomas now? I mean, does this have anything to do with, of course, the recent confirmation battles over?

Brett Kavanaugh, did it have to do with, of course, some of his tussles with Joe Biden? Why now? Why come forward with the story at this point? Well, documentaries take a long time. We've been working on it for almost three years. But I have to say it's become more relevant. The Kavanaugh hearing happened in the middle of our production period. The Me Too movement happened. But I think all that makes it very important to hear Chavez's story. The Me Too movement likes to say that Anita Hill is it's Rosa Parks, founding mother of the movement,

but it's good to look at the real story. I think your podcast is very focused on correcting the myth of history, and that's a myth. And the same thing with the Brett Kavanaugh hearing. It was in a lot of ways a replay of the Thomas hearing. A lot of people noticed that on both sides, so it's worth thinking about what it was that was replayed. So I think it's a, I mean, I think it's very current for the time. But I actually think it's current beyond the time. I think Justice Thomas's story is a great story, a great American story, and it will be 20 or 30 years from now, as well as now.

Although I think it's right for the moment, it's beyond that. I think it's an inspiring story of overcoming great obstacles of resilience in the face of many, many challenges. and of somebody who could easily have defined himself as a victim and chose not to. And it's a great illustration of that path, which is maybe not adequately celebrated today. So I think although it's of the moment, it's beyond that. Yeah, absolutely. And to get more, especially the connection to now modern politics, you could say, one of the more interesting aspects in the movie is getting into Thomas's confrontations

and his battles in the Senate, especially with now, well, presidential candidate Joe Biden, who was the chairman, I believe, of the Judiciary Committee at the time. You know, today is actually the anniversary, the 47th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Obviously, Clarence Thomas has been critical of that decision that did come up during his hearings. But there's actually an interesting moment. I wonder if you could explain where Thomas actually talks about his battles with Biden. and some of the debates over natural law jurisprudence and the Constitution. Can you kind of talk about that a little bit?

Yes. Well, Justice Thomas' attitudes to natural law are actually a theme of the film and his sense of how natural law and originalism inform his jurisprudence. But in the first part of the hearing, Biden asked extremely complex philosophical questions along those lines. But for Justice Thomas, it was that they were not, they were a meandering of way to get him to say, something about Roe and to commit himself. And I think this is the first part of the hearing. Some people don't remember that his hearings had two parts.

There was a week of very grueling testimony where the Biden inquiry came in, and also they accused him of lots of stuff smoking marijuana being an anti-Semite that he had to answer that was in the press, plus, you know, very tough grilling. And then he felt it was over. And the senators had voted, split on the committee, but sent his name forward. And then when this full Senate was getting ready to vote, the Anita Hill allegations were leaked. And then it went back to the Senate Judiciary Committee. So it's in the first hearing that Joe Biden sort of pressed in my natural law, as Justice Thomas says, as a way to get them to say something about Roe, that they could use as a reason not to confirm.

him. And it's so that the, since you say it's the anniversary of Roe, that many, many of the groups opposing him had that as their explicit reason for doing it. I mean, it was a very political, very concerted effort. Yeah, again, there seems to be some connection, especially with we talk about the modern Kavanaugh hearings as well, that that issue seems to come up very big and play prominently. And then, of course, you get the ugliness of the accusations, the sexual assault, and of course the media really plays into that as well in creating. that storm. So one question I think I'd like to ask is who is your intended audience of the movie?

As far as if you could sit any group of people in this country down and say, watch this movie. Who would it be? Well, I really made the movie for people who don't know Justice Thomas and don't have their minds made up. Not necessarily those are beyond just your listeners. I believe it's convincing to people who don't know them and have many of these misconceptions. He's quiet. He doesn't speak.

He's not smart. He doesn't have many opinions. He's not active on the court. And I think you can't think that after you see this film. But I do feel that, I mean, it's going to be movie theaters, as you said, January 31st. And the people who are partisans of Justice Thomas and maybe your listeners need to go and show up and buy tickets. You know, people on the other side are very good at doing that. You know, we often, our film is often compared or contrasted to RBG about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

It did fabulously well at the box office. All her fans showed up. So the people who might be sympathetic to Thomas have to show up to. It'll be in 15 or so theaters on January 31st, and if people show up, it'll be in many more. They can go to our website, just as Thomasmovie.com, and see where it's playing in their area. And if it's not playing, and there's a big enough group of 30 or 40, we can make a showy. in the area that they are. There was ways to sign up for that on the website.

So, you know, the purpose of the film is really to bring Justice Thomas back to the prominence and respect that he deserves. And I don't think that will happen unless there's some groundswell out there. So I hope that your show helps create that groundswell. Yeah, we definitely hope so, too. It's interesting. There were some controversies at the African-American Museum here in Washington, D.C., that Clarence Thomas didn't get in.

enough of a prominent position, obviously, you could say at this point, one of the greatest Americans, man, who's been on the Supreme Court, has an incredible story. I think that's inspirational, especially for young Americans who do grow up in bad circumstances. I mean, few have experienced the kind of struggles that he did as a young man and yet rose to this position and became not just a man who succeeded, but as such an alerted man, an understanding of the law. Really, one of the most prominent positions in American life, it seems that a lot of young Americans in particular can learn from that story and create an inspiration that they can empower themselves rather than feeling like victims?

Absolutely. That is really true. And we hope that beyond its time in theaters and on TV or wherever it goes, that we'll be able to get excerpts from it and curriculum materials into schools at Black History Month. There's a lot of counter-narratives to that. The 1619 Project has curriculum materials and Black Lives Matter. And there's a lot of reparations in the movement. And we hope that our film or parts of our film with curriculum materials can be incorporated to every high school across America.

Because I think it is inspiring to young people, especially African Americans, but not only. And I think it's counter-narrative to the sort of victimhood that many put forward. I mean, it's another way of living your life that Justice Thomas illustrates. and I think it is very inspiring. Yeah, that's great. Definitely maybe a pro 1776, a man who's actually experienced racism and terrible things in this country, yet embraces the principles that made America great to begin with. A truly inspiring story, as you said, very much counters the opinions of some in the 1619 project

that directly counters that and says that our founding ideals are wrong. So absolutely an inspirational story. and Michael, thank you so much for joining us. I mean, the name of the movie is Created Equal. Clarence Thomas, in his own words, it's out January 31st, and it's definitely going to be a must-see. Thank you so much, Michael, for joining us. Thank you.

And go to that website, JusticeThomasmovie.com. Thank you very much. That'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal Podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcast. podcast, Google Play, or Spotify, and please leave us a review or rating on Apple Podcasts to give us any feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more

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