David French

I could almost count to eight or nine for that position, leaving aside Thomas.

I agree, Emily, that he was more opaque.

But there's another thing that was very interesting, and I don't think enough people have noticed this,

The advocate for Lisa Cook was Paul Clement, okay?

And this is significant because what you had was a fight between sort of the archetype of MAGA legal philosophy and the Solicitor General, probably the best advocate for MAGA legal philosophy in America is the current Solicitor General, John Sauer, against not just any conservative attorney,

but a guy who would be like at the Council of Elrond of originalism.

I mean, this is a guy who is sort of the archetype of the conservative attorney.

And so you had Magalov versus classical conservatism, quite frankly, in that fight.

And so what Clement was able to do was to really ping all of Justice Roberts and Barrett's and Kavanaugh and Gorsuch's

All of their originalism, you know, like set off all of their originalism bells, right?

And he was able to do that fluently.

And it was fascinating to listen to the argument because...

As it went on, I felt like Clement was getting so much more confident.

It was like, oh, I win through door number one, but if you don't like door number one, door number two is fabulous as well.

I win through door number two.

And rarely have I left an oral argument or listened to an oral argument and emerged from it

thinking that the outcome was more clear than this one.

Now, watch that be famous.

You know, it's always famous last words that you watch an oral argument and you're pretty convinced it could go one way and it goes the other.

But I would be stunned, stunned.