that s tonight on newsnight good evening. i m abby phillip in new york tonight. donald trump loves to be worshiped that much has been clear since he came down those golden escalators. but this week was especially notable because it gave us a mountain of new evidence that he remains idolized by evangelical voters even after 34 felony counts for crimes associated with hush money payments to an adult film actress. the support is ironclad, 80% of evangelical say they support him today let s start with what happened last night in arizona. donald trump held a town hall in a phoenix mega church. now the opening homily called for the crowd to pray over the presumptive nominee, but it was the smite die enemy s message that really rang out loud and clear. listen we do pray for our leaders. but father, if our leaders will not turn to you, if he will not turn to your word, if he will not return to justice, we pray that you would bring those leaders down. all of those people, all those in
Gonna make any specific comparisons between these justices, but i agree if there s a case from bianna, say up at the supreme court? yes. that s that is something that will be an appearance of a conflict it d be easier if congress simply putting a limit so that there are no gifts at all that you don t have to deal with that to begin with. hold the justices to the same standard that we hold every military officer that they can t take any type of gifts like this, every other executive branch employee, every congressional staffer why every judge from the lower courts, district and circuit courts. i don t see why the supreme court should be any different yeah. i mean, it s really flexing that 2.4 million is an eye-popping number. i mean, it s really extraordinary, but especially when compared to the other justices just the chief justice john roberts. i mean, he it has a role here why won t he take
He s not willing to put his foot on it. he s not willing to actually stop anybody and hold them accountable on his own court personally, i think this will go down, this ethical quandary that is the roberts court court will be part of his legacy. he won t be in the first line of his obituary because i don t get to write the obituaries, but five paragraph three, we re going to have to talk about the ethical mouth thesis, pheasants roberts presided over while he was chief justice the issue is that what the supreme court has proved is that it can t police itself, right? it s like when you tell your kid all right. you can come home at a reasonable hour, right. and then they show up at 2:00 in the morning. well, what do you do? you grab the car keys and you say, okay, yeah, abused your privileges now we re putting in a curfew and that again, the parents in this room and pains me to say it, but the adult in the room needs to be congress, needs to be the first branch of government with the c
Or two. but really all eyes are on justice clarence thomas. he amended his disclosure forum from 2019 with two new additions. that say that he says were, quote inadvertently admitted at the time of the filing that we should note they were only brought to light publicly because of a propublica investigation. the first was a trip to bali that was paid for by gop megadonor, harlan crow and his wife thomas also then disclosed a trip paid for by the crows to a private club in monte rio, california that same month. he did not place a value on either trip in the disclosure form because it s not required, but the watchdog group fix the court said that over the last 20 years when it comes to both the disclosed the undisclosed gifts clarence thomas is really in a league of his own. thomas has reportedly received 103 gifts, amounting to 2.4 million in value, and it s not even close.
It? shouldn t he be deciding for the good of the court, which he it seems like when you look at his rulings, when you look at how he conducts himself, he wants to think of himself as playing that role. shouldn t he do more in this moment and what should he do even if congress doesn t act? is there anything? you think that he can do unilaterally on this no, abby, i think john roberts wants you to think of him that way. i don t think john roberts holds himself to that high stared because if he did, he would have done something already i m john roberts says that the supreme court has its own ethics rule. there was that ridiculousness that happened earlier this year. basically the probe because the stuff first came out where john roberts allegedly released a code of ethics, but you ll note that that code of ethics released by john roberts has no teeth as it has no penalty for when the justices violate those ethics rule and so that s that s the, that s the twist here. roberts is willing t