Article III Project founder Mike Davis: “I just want dumb justices who will fall in line”
Davis to Benny Johnson: “I just want dumb justices who will fall in line. Right? And not justices who think they're the smartest people in the room like Amy Coney Barrett or justices who care only about their image like John Roberts.”
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From the June 30, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube
BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): But we all know who John Roberts was, and we've known who John Roberts was for 30 years. We've known what John Roberts was going to do to us. We didn't know what — Amy Coney Barrett is a much more fresh betrayal, and a betrayal that I thought that we were smart enough to never make again. You and I lived through Sandra Day O'Connor, David Souter. We lived through that, where Republicans got a chance to remake the court, and we chose liberals as our choice. Now Democrats never make that decision. Democrats would put — would reanimate the corpses of Joseph Stalin, VI Lenin, and Che Guevara and put them on the court if they could —
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JOHNSON: Were we just too were we going too fast? Were we going too fast? Like, what was this?
DAVIS: No, Ben. She lied. She lied. She auditioned as a constitutionalist. She auditioned as the next Justice Scalia for whom she clerked. She auditioned as this conservative constitutionalist law professor. That's how she auditioned. It was a fraud. She is a fraud. She lied through the process, or it could be one of two things. She lied in her audition when she sold herself as a constitutionalist, and so did her people. All of her former clerks and everyone else sold her as a constitutionalist to me and many others, and I'll call them out by name at some point. Or, or, or she got rattled on the bench. When they showed up at her house with her kids, she got scared. She got rattled, and she pivoted. She went into, I'm going to protect, I'm going to be a mother and be a mother hen and protect my kids and do what the left wants because I don't want them to come to my house and kill my family. Who knows? I — it's one of those two things. But this Amy Coney Barrett that we see today with this birthright citizenship decision, that's not how she auditioned for the job, not even close. So she's either a fraud or she's too scared to do her job. Either way, she should resign. She's not up to the job.
JOHNSON: It's like her old boss, Antonin Scalia, is, like, snapping his gavel in his grave right now over this decision. Am I correct?
DAVIS: I — you know, I can't speak for justice Scalia, but if one of my law clerks sold herself as the next me to get a job and then she goes and betrays that, I would be pretty angry.
JOHNSON: Yeah. What — like, what should Republicans learn? Like, do you like — there were other options, right? There are so many other people that we could have pushed for this open seat in 2020. And I guess it just seems like the, like, deception tactics and some slick marketing worked here. What should we learn going into the — like, heading into the future? Because, Mike, it's just a trend that's been here my whole life. And you know what's amazing is that Ketanji Brown Jackson, as much as you and I might want to make fun of her and everything, she's never going to side — at least the Democrats get that right. She'll never side with the Republicans on anything.
DAVIS: No.
JOHNSON: Forever. For the rest of time. For the next 50 effing years, Mike, they will have a permanent vote against, you know, on the court. Right?
DAVIS: Yeah. I want nine Ketanji Brown Jacksons on the right. Right? I want nine of them. I just want dumb justices who will fall in line. Right? And not justices who think they're the smartest people in the room like Amy Coney Barrett or justices who care only about their image like John Roberts.