The Left has spent thirty-five years trying to destroy Clarence Thomas for one reason – he refuses to think the way they tell him to.
Ted Cruz went on national television and said what conservatives have known for thirty-five years but no one in power would say out loud.
What happened on that same broadcast proved Cruz right before the segment was over.
Ted Cruz Called the Left's Treatment of Clarence Thomas Bigotry
Ted Cruz was on Meet the Press to promote his new book, Going Further: The Incomparable Clarence Thomas – a 336-page biography built on nine and a half hours of private interviews with the justice himself.
Host Kristen Welker pressed the standard attack: Thomas benefited from affirmative action, then voted to dismantle it.
Cruz didn't hedge.
"There is a bitterness that is directed to Justice Thomas that is profoundly unfair," he said. "If you look at Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia was every bit as conservative as Justice Thomas. But yet Scalia didn't have the scorn, the contempt, the derision."
Cruz named it.
"The Left, I think, has a real bigotry. They look at Clarence Thomas and they say, how dare a black man believe what he believes. And Clarence Thomas is someone who is not going to be told what to believe."
Scalia and Thomas held identical judicial philosophies. Only one of them spent thirty-five years being called Uncle Tom, dragged across Senate hearing rooms, and subjected to coordinated character assassination.
The difference was never their legal views, it was their skin color.
James Clyburn Called His Clarence Thomas Vote a Mistake on Meet the Press
Welker brought on Democrat Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina next – and Clyburn proceeded to demonstrate everything Cruz had just described.
Welker asked Sunday whether Clyburn still stood by that decision.
"Absolutely not," Clyburn said. "I have made mistakes in my life. And that's one that I made, and I will own up to that mistake."
His reason? Thomas had "rebelled against his own background and experiences."
Clyburn's objection has nothing to do with how Thomas reads the law. His objection is that Thomas's rulings don't reflect his race — that a black man from rural Georgia should rule differently than he does, regardless of what the Constitution requires.
Clyburn never used the words "race traitor." He described Thomas as a man who had rebelled against his background and trusted the audience to finish the sentence.
Democrats have a position on Clarence Thomas that they dress up in legal language but never quite state plainly. A black man from Pin Point, Georgia – raised by his grandfather in rural poverty, nearly a Catholic priest before he found constitutional law – is obligated, in their view, to rule in ways that match where he came from.
The Constitution is secondary. His identity comes first.
Thomas has rejected that from the bench for thirty-five years.
Clarence Thomas on Why Being Black Does Not Mean Voting Democrat
Thomas answered Clyburn's argument long before Sunday. In his 2023 affirmative action concurrence, Thomas rejected what he called a "race-infused worldview" that reduces people to their skin color and discounts their individual choices and experiences.
Cruz's book traces how Thomas arrived at that position. He grew up in Pin Point, raised by a grandfather who worked him hard and built him harder.
He went to Holy Cross and Yale as an angry left-wing radical in army fatigues – and came to the conservative movement not through family tradition but through argument, through reading Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman and deciding they were right.
Democrats cannot forgive that conversion. A black conservative who drifted rightward through circumstance they can dismiss. A black man who examined their ideas, rejected them on the merits, and never looked back is a different problem entirely.
Cruz pointed out that the Scalia comparison exposes the game. Scalia was every bit as originalist, every bit as willing to issue rulings Democrats hated. He drew criticism. Thomas drew thirty-five years of personal destruction. The jurisprudence was identical. The skin color was not.
Democrats have built their political coalition on the assumption that they own the black vote. A black Supreme Court justice who has spent thirty-five years demonstrating otherwise is not just an inconvenience – he is proof that the assumption was always wrong.
Clyburn confirmed it Sunday without intending to. Cruz said it out loud on purpose.
Sources:
- Pam Key, "Ted Cruz: The Left Has 'Real Bigotry' Toward Justice Clarence Thomas," Breitbart, August 30, 2026.
- "Time Will Tell: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz Teases 2028 White House Bid, Fires Back at Clarence Thomas Critics," Tampa Free Press, August 31, 2026.
- Ben Smith, "James Clyburn All but Calls Clarence Thomas a Race Traitor," RedState, August 31, 2026.
- Matt Margolis, "James Clyburn Basically Says Clarence Thomas 'Ain't Black,'" PJ Media, August 30, 2026.
- "Meet the Press – August 30, 2026," NBC News transcript, August 30, 2026.
- "Clarence Thomas: I Can Be Black and Conservative," Daily Citizen, August 24, 2026.
