John Roberts’s PR Strategy Just Isn’t Working Anymore

The chief justice has long been adept at getting journalists to frame him as a scrupulous nonpartisan. It's a hard sell these days!

The Supreme Court kicked off a new term this week, hearing oral argument in high-profile cases about the federal government’s fragile efforts to address America’s ongoing gun violence crisis, and Richard Glossip’s 20-year fight to avoid execution for a crime that even the state that sentenced him to death doubts he committed. 

Joan Biskupic, CNN’s longtime Supreme Court analyst, is focused on a different crisis unfolding in real time: Several months after the Court decided Trump v. United States, in which Chief Justice John Roberts wrote an opinion for the six conservatives that insulated Donald Trump from criminal liability for his role in the January 6 insurrection, Roberts seems very, very sad. From her latest:

Roberts was shaken by the adverse public reaction to his decision affording Trump substantial immunity from criminal prosecution. His protestations that the case concerned the presidency, not Trump, held little currency.

Unlike most of the justices, he made no public speeches over the summer. Colleagues and friends who saw him said he looked especially weary, as if carrying greater weight on his shoulders. On Monday, after he ascended the bench to formally open a new session, Roberts hewed to a familiar script and kept any emotion in check.

I would tell you more about Biskupic’s reporting here, but the sentences you see above are the sum total of the new information contained therein: He looks tired, and did nothing out of the ordinary at work on Monday. Otherwise, the balance of the post rehashes the criticism that has dogged Roberts all summer long: He imagined that people would welcome his Trump opinion as a nuanced, elegant tribute to the majesty of this country’s system of separating powers among co-equal branches of government. Instead, people saw it for what it was: a Republican justice twisting himself into logical pretzels to ensure that the Republican presidential nominee could run for office without having to plan campaign stops around his ongoing criminal trial.

Biskupic’s dispatch comes in the wake of New York Times reporting that Roberts, who has long curated his image as a scrupulous nonpartisan, in fact spearheaded the Court’s pro-Trump decisions, in some cases freezing out the liberal justices to retain total control over the outcome. For most of his tenure, Roberts has been adept at getting journalists to tell the story he wants told about himself. Given that most Americans disagree with his decision in Trump v. United States, and are more confident than ever that the Court’s decisions are motivated “mainly by politics,” now certainly qualifies as a time when he could use some friendly spin.

What I think Biskupic’s dispatch reveals, albeit indirectly, is that Roberts’s media strategy just isn’t working anymore. The report has the cadence of old-fashioned damage control, and it is probably not a coincidence that it comes from a journalist whose all-access biography of Roberts framed him as—you guessed it—“torn” between “carrying out a conservative agenda” and “protecting the Court’s image and his place in history.” But there is nothing of substance to offer in support of this thesis anymore, other than the revelation that his friends think he looks like hell these days, which is relatable, but hardly persuasive in the way he probably hopes.

This sort of empty coverage of Roberts’s position within the Court is the inevitable consequence of his decision to lead the Court’s unabashed embrace of partisan politics: Under the circumstances, the only way he can get the sympathetic coverage he’s used to getting is if it very obviously says nothing of substance.

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John Roberts is escorted by former Senator Fred Thompson as the two arrive on Capitol Hill to meet with senators prior to Roberts’s confirmation vote, 2005 (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)