Gorsuch and Sotomayor Deny NPR Mask Story

BUCK: One thing we always do here on this show, we tell you this: If we ever get anything wrong or even if we have to update something, we’ll do it ’cause we want to tell you what’s true all the time. So we saw reporting, both of us, Clay — and I saw a reporter from NPR that said — that Justice Gorsuch was not willing to wear a mask and so Sotomayor was doing the Supreme Court oral arguments remotely. Clay, we have an update to that, a correction to that initial reporting. What’s going on?

CLAY: Yeah, basically the Supreme Court justices are saying that that NPR story is not true, and I’m reading directly from a statement that came out from Justices Sotomayor and 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.”

So this is pretty interesting in general that they would feel the need because that NPR story, as we talked about it on this program, spread virally — no pun intended there — surrounding all of the covid analysis and as a storyline. Now, I do think it’s interesting that Justice Sotomayor would put out a statement that says this story is false and never have corrected the fact that she said a hundred thousand kids are in severe covid health issues right now; that many of them are on ventilators.

That went out. She never actually addressed at all. But this report that she had asked Justice Gorsuch to wear a mask and that was the reason why she was not appearing in the courtroom after he had refused. They are specifically saying that’s untrue, and we should say this. This is just further evidence, Buck, of why so many people, their natural response anytime a story like this comes out is to view it with apprehension because there’s so much falsehood out there.

Now, it’s also worth saying, they could be always lying in this statement or saying something that is untrue because they weren’t happy the story got out, but I’m inclined to believe that both of them are issuing this public statement saying that it’s false. I’m inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the Supreme Court justices that NPR got this one wrong and failed in their reporting on this particular issue.

And we just want to make sure on this show — we try to do this all the time, Buck — if there is a fact that we talk about as a reported fact and it’s not, it ends up not being the raw or someone later challenges it, we try to come back and make sure we address it with you because we’re trying to be as honest with you every day as we can.

BUCK: Yes, and in this case, we didn’t get the report wrong, just to be clear. The report was wrong that we reported on. But even when that happens, we’re gonna tell everybody, “Look, it turns out they said this is not the case.”