Judge Mathis is firing back at Judge Judy after she told Americans who don’t like the country to go somewhere else, reminding her that Black people built it.
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Greg Mathis sat down with the Art of Dialogue podcast and took on the comments Judy Sheindlin made to USA Today while celebrating the 30th anniversary of “Judge Judy.” In that interview, Sheindlin, 83, called America the greatest country in the world and said, “If you don’t like this country, go somewhere else.” She added that people shouldn’t come to the most successful country in the world and say they want to change it.
The comments already drew heat on “The View,” where Ana Navarro and Sunny Hostin took issue with them while Joy Behar argued Judy was not telling people who disagree with Trump to leave.
Mathis was not having it either. He pointed to Sheindlin saying she has a house and a home here, and to her wealth, which he put at $200 million.
“So, of course, you do love this country. And no, you don’t want to leave,” he said.
Then he made the case for who actually has claim to it. “We built this country through forced labor and enslavement. And our free labor made it the richest country in the world,” Judge Mathis said. If anybody should be getting out, he argued, it is not the descendants of the people who did the building.
He also offered his read on where her comments come from. “Quite frankly, it just sounds like she identifies with the MAGA crowd,” Mathis said, adding that he, like many people, believes the majority of that crowd is racist.
What surprised him most was hearing it from someone who spent her career as a lawyer and a judge. As a lawyer and a judge, we should honor the First Amendment, speaking up, protesting, coming out against our government when we think we should,” he said.
Mathis laid out his alternative to packing up and leaving. Challenge government leaders. Challenge corporations. Challenge the criminal justice system and what he called the prison industrial complex. He tied it to the civil rights movement, when going to jail was a deliberate tactic to build support and force the laws to change.
“We can’t change the white folks’ hearts and minds, can’t make them love us, but we can make them obey the law toward us,” he said.
In his view, a judge telling people to love the country or leave amounts to endorsing the suppression of protest. He also questioned where exactly Judy expects Black Americans to go, asking if the answer is back to Africa.
For all his heat, Judge Mathis was honest about the ratings. He said he has never been in Judy’s stratosphere and that her numbers have always been four times his, and four times most shows on television.
“Judy’s show has been the number one show on television since Oprah,” he said. He went further, claiming Judy outrated Oprah for three years before Oprah ended her talk show, and that some suggest that is part of why Oprah left. He added that when he was asked to appear on Oprah’s show, he was told Oprah doesn’t like judge shows.
He also nodded to a story of his that went viral on Instagram, recalling how Judy didn’t look up to speak to him when he walked over to say hi after he first got on television.
He kept it playful at the end, acknowledging she has the clout, the power, the viewers and the money. “So all my little talk, she can just blow off,” he said.