Despite being one of the most extreme right-wing justices on the Supreme Court bench, Samuel Alito was a touch aghast this week at the notion that his decisions would classify him within the confines of MAGA.

“It’s offensive,” he said. “I honestly try to decide every single case on the merits, every single application on the merit,” he told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “And that’s true whether the president is Donald Trump or Joe Biden or Barack Obama or anybody else.”

While it’s rare for the justice to sit down for an interview with a media outlet — given in connection with the release of his book — Alito’s political and ideological positions are no secret.

And his record is impossible to ignore: His stated merit-based decision-making over the years has greatly benefited President Donald Trump, who AP says has called Alito “one of the Greatest of All Time.”

Perhaps most notable is Alito writing the 2022 decision that reversed Roe v. Wade and ended abortion as a nationwide right. The justice’s draft opinion was filled with faulty science, partisan claims and even a racist myth about abortion being fueled by the “desire to suppress the size of the African American population.”

Earlier this year, Alito wrote the majority opinion allowing Trump to cancel temporary protected status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants, dismissing the president’s bigoted reasoning behind the change as simply “heated language.” In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said Trump’s language is “so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print.”

Alito has also made his positions known through his dissents, including in the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. Despite agreeing with the court’s decision in 2020 not to hear a case brought by Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas still used the moment to blast the Obergefell v. Hodges decision.

The 2015 decision “enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots, making their religious liberty concerns that much easier to dismiss,” the two justices wrote. “Davis may have been one of the first victims of this court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision.”

Alito has also faced his fair share of political corruption accusations. In 2024, private event recordings revealed Alito said that political polarization would be extremely difficult to repair and that one side was “going to win.” He also agreed that the nation needs to once again become “a place of godliness.”

The recordings came out amid reports that two flags affiliated with Jan. 6 insurrectionists were flown outside the justices’ homes. The controversy prompted court-related ethics questions and demands that Alito recuse himself from cases involving both Capitol rioters and Trump’s claims of absolute presidential immunity from prosecution. The justice rejected those demands.

The conservative justice joined Thomas at the center of ProPublica’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Friends of the Court” series that uncovered several expensive gifts and trips the two received from billionaires. According to the investigation, Alito took an undisclosed luxury fishing trip in 2008 with Republican billionaire Paul Singer, who later had cases before the court. Alito did not recuse himself from cases involving Singer’s companies.

“They look for any little thing they can find, and they try to make something out of it,” Alito was caught saying of ProPublica in audio captured in June 2024 at a Supreme Court Historical Society event.

While Trump has praised Alito for ruling in his favor, the president has recently chastised other justices — including those he appointed — as not loyal enough. Alito told AP that he is personally “not pleased” with the kind of rhetoric coming from the administration.

“Everybody in this country has the right to criticize what we do. The substance of their criticism can be quite harsh,” he told the outlet. “If we deserve it, then that’s fine. But rhetoric is a different story.”

By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.