Can the political left and the right live “peacefully” in this country?
Probably not.
That’s the mindset of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samual Alito, who got candid with a liberal documentary filmmaker, Lauren Windsor, who posed as a religious conservative and secretly recorded her recent exchange with Alito.
“I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end,” Windsor told Alito at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner on June 3. “I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning.”
MORE:Martha-Ann Alito (and her flag fetish) caught on her own secret recording
“I think you’re probably right,” Alito responded. “On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”
“People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that — to return our country to a place of godliness,” Windsor went on.
“I agree with you. I agree with you,” Alito responded.
Windsor shared her story and recording with Rolling Stone.
It comes after a neighbor that his wife has been in a dispute with alleged the justice lied to lawmakers about the timing of an American flag flown upside down at his home.
Democrats in Congress asked Alito to recuse himself from cases involving Donald Trump and the failed insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6 because the upside down flag — and another flag flown at his beach house — is synonymous with Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen.
“It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs,” Alito told lawmakers in a written response to their request, refusing to recuse himself.
“At best, he’s mistaken, but at worst, he’s just outright lying,” Emily Baden told CNN’s Erin Burnett on “OutFront.”
After news broke of the flag being flown upside down at their home, reports surfaced ofan “Appeal to Heaven” flag — also carried by insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — being flown on a flagpole outside Alito’s home on Long Beach Island in July and September of 2023.
The justice rejected calls to step aside from Supreme Court cases involving Trump and Jan. 6 defendants, saying his wife hoisted the two controversial flags that flew above their homes.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.
