Mrs. Alito Explains on Secret Recording Why Her Husband’s Job Is Really Cramping Her Style

This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.

“I made a flag in my head. This is how I satisfy myself. I made a flag.” —Martha-Ann Alito, wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, to liberal activist Lauren Windsor at a dinner reception last week

Martha-Ann Alito just really cherishes the freedom to fly controversial flags outside her homes, and her husband’s job is cramping her style!

During a dinner reception in Washington last week, the wife of Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito spoke at length about her grudges and the flag she dreams about flying from her yard one day. She thought she was speaking to a conservative Christian supporter at a private event—but, unbeknownst to her, she was actually talking to liberal activist Lauren Windsor, who was secretly recording their conversation.

Windsor approached the Alitos to express faux dismay with how they’ve been treated in the media recently, after the New York Times reported that insurrectionist-linked flags were spotted flying over two of their homes. It immediately sparked concerns about the legitimacy of the court, since Samuel Alito will be weighing in on cases about presidential immunity and the ways that Jan. 6 rioters can be charged. He has refused calls to recuse himself. The justices are supposed to be impartial arbiters of the law, but the flag incidents tip Alito’s hand about his real agenda.

Meanwhile, though Martha-Ann is trying to curb her flag addiction after her husband asked her to, she can’t help but dream.

“I want a ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus’ flag, because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month,” she says on the recording.

Sure, she’ll restrain herself for now because of her husband’s pesky job holding one of the most powerful unelected offices in the land. But after he’s retired? Watch out, world! “He’s like, ‘Oh, please don’t put up a flag,’ ” Alito said of her husband. “I said, ‘I won’t do it, because I am deferring to you. But when you are free of this nonsense, I’m putting it up, and I’m gonna send them a message every day, maybe every week, I’ll be changing the flags.’ They’ll be all kinds.”

Even more than that, she has a dream flag she’s longing to fly. “I made a flag in my head. This is how I satisfy myself. I made a flag,” she told Windsor, sounding uncannily like a villain in a Bravo reality show. “It’s white and has yellow-and-orange flames around it. And in the middle is the word vergogna. Vergogna in Italian means ‘shame’—vergogna. V-E-R-G-O-G-N-A. Vergogna.”

Guess Justice Alito wasn’t kidding when he said, “‍‍My wife is fond of flying flags”!