(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) It didn’t take long for the leftist media to ramp up its Fake News machine in the New Year.
In what could turn out to be one of the more egregious examples, NPR earlier this week reported that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch had refused to wear a mask after being asked to by fellow Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
That seems, at best, dubiously plausible to a certain degree, with Sotomayor being nearly 70-years-old and suffering from diabetes she fits into a COVID high-risk category; and while the whole Supreme bench is fully vaxxed and boosted, some have decided to go maskless, as depicted in several artist sketches from recent court proceedings.
NPR, a taxpayer-funded bastion of leftist bias, wasn’t content with leaving it at that, strongly implying that a soulless Gorsuch was directly refusing to heed his colleague’s request:
It was pretty jarring earlier this month when the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court took the bench for the first time since the omicron surge over the holidays. All were now wearing masks. All, that is, except Justice Neil Gorsuch. What’s more, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was not there at all, choosing instead to participate through a microphone setup in her chambers.
Sotomayor has diabetes, a condition that puts her at high risk for serious illness, or even death, from COVID-19. She has been the only justice to wear a mask on the bench since last fall when, amid a marked decline in COVID-19 cases, the justices resumed in-person arguments for the first time since the onset of the pandemic.
Now, though, the situation had changed with the omicron surge, and according to court sources, Sotomayor did not feel safe in close proximity to people who were unmasked. Chief Justice John Roberts, understanding that, in some form asked the other justices to mask up.
They all did. Except Gorsuch, who, as it happens, sits next to Sotomayor on the bench. His continued refusal since then has also meant that Sotomayor has not attended the justices’ weekly conference in person, joining instead by telephone.
That ghastly, abhorrent conservative Gorsuch, endangering the health and safety of Sotomayor and forcing her to work remote, makes for a compelling leftist narrative. And the leftists pounced.
“Neil Gorsuch is sitting in a stolen Supreme Court seat. The least he could do is look out for those colleagues of his who got there fair and square,” tweeted MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan.
“Neil Gorsuch refusing to wear a mask out of respect for his colleague Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s health concerns is not just inconsiderate, it’s downright insidious,” squawked Reecie Colbert of Black Women Views. “This kind of low character POS having a lifetime appointment is proof that SCOTUS is an extension of the right wing.”
It was, of course, proof of absolutely nothing. The story was totally bogus, according to none other than Sotomayor.
Just in: Statement by Justice Sotomayor and Justice Gorsuch:
Reporting that Justice Sotomayor asked Justice Gorsuch to wear a mask surprised us. It is false. While we may sometimes disagree about the law, we are warm colleagues and friends.
— Robert Barnes (@scotusreporter) January 19, 2022
NPR and the leftist Fake News machine strike again, and they couldn’t even make it a half-month into the new year; something to keep in mind for the next 11 months.
