Ginni Thomas Is Not A Liar
Her manic texts are a vivid window into the psychology of the Trump era.
The uproar over Ginni Thomas and her actions in the run-up to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol left behind something of a puzzle: How did Thomas arrive at a state of such extreme agitation about the purported theft of the 2020 presidential election when that conspiracy theory had already been rebutted by the New York Times?
At first, I was angry at the Times. Perhaps the news organization’s decision to put so much content behind its imposing paywall meant that Thomas had been unable to avail herself of its democracy-illuminating coverage, which would have reassured her that Joseph Biden was the lawfully elected president.
But that didn’t quite add up. Surely, as a board member or adviser to various conservative groups, Thomas could have submitted an expense account to be reimbursed for her Times subscription, or borrowed a login from her spouse, Clarence Thomas, who presumably gets his access subsidized by the U.S. Supreme Court. She could have relied on other responsible news organizations, including POLITICO, that don’t charge for political coverage.
It all leads to a rueful conclusion: Thomas has seen the comprehensive and credible news coverage making clear that Donald Trump has no legitimate basis for his claims of a stolen election and simply doesn’t believe it. Well, now.
Thomas’ fervid text messages to then-Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and others, urging vigorous efforts to halt Biden’s ascension to the presidency and keep the incumbent in place, have some evidentiary value to the House’s select Jan. 6 committee as it develops a chronology of events leading to the deadly mayhem on Capitol Hill.
The Thomas texts, however, are far more revelatory as psychological disclosures — a breathtaking window into the mind of a Trump believer. In that sense, there are three distinct ways in which the Thomas texts illuminate the broader historical moment.
One, is about the nature of the “Big Lie.” The phrase itself is a reflection of a mindset common among people, including journalists, alarmed by the efforts to overturn an election. The assumption is that by sharpening language — by stating crisply and emphatically that Trump’s election claims are false — it will make it harder for those falsehoods to gain currency. Many news organizations have showily dropped traditional mushy language like “disputed” or “disproven” in favor of phrases like “Trump’s lie” in their election coverage. It’s a reasonable choice. But the effect of this tell-it-like-it-is coverage isn’t especially impressive.
Thomas shows that it has scant effect on her — or tens of millions of people like her. To the contrary, she almost certainly is more motivated in her beliefs because people she holds in contempt among Democrats or establishment media tell her the opposite is true.
Whatever one thinks about Ginni Thomas, the texts are the work of someone who believes she is a truth-teller, not a liar. “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!,” Thomas wrote Meadows. “You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”
That leads to the second way Thomas’ texts are a window into not just her mind but the minds of many. It is in the sincerity of her belief that she is aligned with the victimized party.
One constant of my 30 years covering national politics is how opposing partisans believe the same thing: Our side has the right ideas, but we are just not tough enough. The other side wins because they aren’t burdened by conscience and are willing to be ruthless.
This notion is reflected in Thomas’ texts, both the “greatest heist of our history” and her imploring Meadows to “save us from the left taking America down.”
But it’s apparent this mindset is also the vehicle by which other players — including many who, unlike Thomas, really do know that claims of a stolen election, as opposed to one their side lost, are false — manage to avoid a damning self-appraisal that they are dishonest, unprincipled people.
It is a psychological tool that, once employed, has no logical endpoint. The Washington Post noted that Sen. Ted Cruz, who threw himself heartily into the effort to challenge the election results, in a 2015 memoir assailed former Vice President Al Gore as a “petulant” spoilsport for not quickly conceding loss in the contested 2000 election. He said then that pressing the courts to rule on numerous questions relating to vote counting irregularities in Florida was an effort by Democrats to “steal the presidency.” The hypocrisy seems so evident as to be beyond dispute. I’ll bet Cruz has no trouble living with himself by arguing that he is simply playing the game the way ambitious operators play it.
This instinct has deep roots. Richard Nixon believed he lost the 1960 presidential election because Republicans weren’t ruthless or rule-bending enough to compete against the Kennedy machine. “Play it tough,” Nixon told henchman H.R. Haldeman, as captured on his own White House tapes, as he urged an illegal cover-up in the opening days of the Watergate scandal in June 1972. “That’s the way they play it, and that’s the way we’re going to play it.”
This leads to a third point underscored by Ginni Thomas’ flamboyant return to the public spotlight: It is a mistake to imagine that our seething, remorseless politics is fundamentally about Trump. He drastically magnified veins of contempt that reach deep into the past. There is striking continuity of themes and even key characters.
Ginni Thomas, of course, was radicalized during her husband’s 1991 Supreme Court confirmation fight over Anita Hill’s sexual harassment. To her mind, it showed how Democrats would do anything in pursuit of their agenda. The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee then was Joe Biden. The chief counsel of the committee was Ron Klain, now White House chief of staff, then immersed in the deliberations over how to handle Hill’s allegations. He tweeted in 2018 that he believed her testimony against Clarence Thomas. One of the foremost chroniclers of that episode was journalist Jane Mayer. That’s the same writer whose recent work for the New Yorker on Ginni Thomas’ political activism, and how this could be improperly intersecting with Clarence Thomas’ role on the high court, drew headlines earlier this year.
If disinfecting American politics of its crippling contempt were simply a matter of exposing that Donald Trump is promoting lies about the election, or that Ginni Thomas is guilelessly falling for them, it would be simple. The genuine mania she summons on behalf of her distorted perceptions of reality shows it is a lot more complicated.