Before it compared Trump to Hitler, Thursday’s edition of the PBS NewsHour made the Justice Alito flag controversy an all-encompassing scandal. First the network’s Supreme Court expert Marcia Coyle discussed the Supreme Court’s decision to allow a Republican-drawn congressional district in South Carolina to stand, but segued into the controversy over two flags being flown over two of Justice Alito’s homes – an American flag hung upside down at his residence, and a so-called “Appeal to Heaven” flag hung outside his beach home in New Jersey.
On those feeble grounds, the New York Times Jodi Kantor, who broke the story in the paper and previously appeared on the NewsHour to suggest Alito had “insurrectionist” January 6 views, since the upside-down U.S. flag and the Appeal to Heaven flag (featuring a pine tree below the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven”) were allegedly symbols of the “Stop the Steal” movement in support of Donald Trump having won the 2020 election.
