What do you think?Left: John Roberts after his nomination.
— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) February 25, 2026
Right: John Roberts today.
It isn’t the aging that stands out.
You can see the extinguished husk of his soul.
This is a man that knows he sold out, and that the Court of John Roberts will be remembered as a stain on American History. pic.twitter.com/JzNfTCyv2D
25 ఫిబ్రవరి, 2026
I don't agree with this precise statement of what has happened to John Roberts, but, clearly something has happened.
పోస్ట్లు
100 కామెంట్లు:
Depends on who chooses the photos.
Roberts hasn't changed. Just gotten old. There's a reason why the D's were so pleased with the choice of Roberts in 2004. Bush 43 didn't want to fight for a conservative. And that's also why he didn't make Scalia Chief Justice.
He got older. The tight-lipped smile on the left has been replaced by a tight-lipped frown on the right, but that doesn't have to mean anything.
John Roberts is a traitor who served globalist oligarchs and insurance overlords his entire life.
His legal decisions are based on keeping money from Americans flowing to the Epstein class.
He is a piece of trash who made a mockery of legal reasoning and he knows that history is going to remember him for calling Obamacare a tax.
Roberts is a swamp creature.
A soul cannot extinguish that never ever existed.
He got older AND his soul is an extinguished husk.
I have to disagree with those who think Roberts is “shat 71 looks like.” I’m 9 years older and fancy that I look a lot better.
I've sold out, in my time, and I've got older, over time. Both have impacts on my public aspect. But I stopped selling out, and that helps a bit, at least when looking in the mirror in the mornings. The getting older only has one alternative available, and that I refuse to accept. Yet.
He got older, yes, but that doesn't explain the 'look'. Plenty of people in their 70's retain a youthful visage. Roberts shows the legacy of his decisions and the stress he lives under. I wouldn't say he's got a guilty conscience, but he's feeling a weight. He's too much a creature of the Beltway to be a Chief Justice, IMO.
He looks like he got trapped without a coat in the recent south Florida freeze: Green iguanas falling from the trees, plants dying off and turning brown, etc.
Part of this is age, part of this is stress, and part of this is randomly catching someone with a routine "bad face." Hostile commentators have long extracted unflattering blinks from videos to make their enemies look clueless and out of touch.
Projection is not just for movie theaters.
He switched his tie color from red to blue.
Roberts was on the receiving line last night as Trump entered the hall. The handshake was not friendly.
I have a friend that is 73 and still works as a deputy constable working the streets. He faces life and death situations regularly when on duty. He looks far healthier.
Far as it goes, RFK Jr. is 72 and Donald Trump is 79. Both look healthier.
I won’t say Roberts is a sell out, although I can’t explain a core principle he may have. But I don’t think it is the job. Clarence Thomas is 77. Thomas looks better and is consistent.
And the Lord disposes via Big Mike's typo.
Who is YOUR Leviathan? Control is an illusion.
Beauty, beholder, yada yada...
Maybe he has a case of the blues.
A touched up, edited, posed photo of years ago looks different than one taken of an older man with none of those features? Taken from a video, maybe?
Not surprising. Plus stress.
The contrast is striking, but don't ignore the significant variables at play.
RINO beltway standard. Roberts is creature of beltway.
Supreme Court has been feminized, and thus politicized. Look at Wisconsin Supreme Court for worst case scenario, where judges openly campaign on their political positions, disregard the legislated statutes, in full AWFL mode.
Getting old ain’t for sissies.
That's what "ObamaCare is a tax, and therefore valid, despite the fact that the Administration insists it isn't" looks like: a soulless husk of a worthless scum bag
Paraphrasing Ecclesiastes: “The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong...but age and chance happen to them all."
Chief Justus Putney Swope has got to have soul!
White boy lost in teh Blues?
JFC, one is posed in a studio the other is a candid snap. Of course they look different
Aging is very individual. I watched a couple -- same numerical ages -- fall apart at very different rates. The wife shrunk down into a gray tiny little mummy and then died, while the husband stayed strong, tall, and robust for years.
His skin issues may follow from sun damage or poor nutrition (weak vitamin and mineral absorption that comes with age). The grimace -- that's immediate stress.
Can anyone help me to do this selling out thing? I get the impression anyone can do it, and I'm anyone too.
Robert’s went into his chosen profession. What he didn’t realize is when he accepted the position of Justice, and later Chief Justice, he would be under enormous pressure, primarily from the left. National spotlight baby. He’s weak and he wilted.
Compare his spine to Trump’s.
Covid shots
Perhaps he is ill? or just old? or that's a bad photo.
The real disgrace is Crook Joe's installation and his nomination of ketenji. she is only a arm seat for the radical left.
I’m amazed at the commenters who seem to believe that they could handle the kind of pressure and exposure Roberts faces. I don’t know why anybody wants this job. It looks like hell on earth to me.
the left should be thrilled with john roberts = he often votes their way.
He has given every indication of believing that the weight of the institution of the SC depends heavily, if not wholly, on him. He is wrong; he is just one of nine. But in that belief, he has sold his soul in compromises that must have taken a lot out of him. Obamacare a big one. And thus the husk-of-a-man look when he should be healthier.
“ I’m 9 years older and fancy that I look a lot better.”
You and me both, Mike.
If you google what happened to John Roberts, you'll probably get the answer malaria.
Je just got older but like everything it's gotta be a political dig.
Ya I think Jerry Garcia said we wanted to sell out but nobody was buying…
He's been a huge disappointment, young or old. Being worse than useless is a bad legacy.
Leftists constantly harassing him 24/7/365 and yes the responsibility wears on people. He looks like an old 71 because he's spent almost 20 years herding cats while getting death threats. He probably feels like he has no allies on either side. Duh! I can empathize and I am not fond of him. My reasons start with him not disciplining the lower courts when they continually violate his orders.
But yeah the DNC media is going to pretend to believe he "sold out the country." Because they are venal liars.
In USA (vapid and materialistic) no one is allowed to age.
You must look like an approved hollywood stretched and duck lipped robot.
Roberts f.u- ed the chicken on Obamacare.
John Roberts, the Fox News anchor, has been diagnosed with a severe case of malaria.
Don't know about Justice Roberts.
What a lazy trope. As I recall (it wasn’t memorable) the maker of the Margaret Thatcher bio movie used it too: Cruel aging and indifferent death is the unique fate of those whose political opinions differ from my own.
It's probably a combination of aging and the circumstances. In the SOTU the Justices are supposed to be poker-faced.
Naturally a much younger Roberts was all smiles when he was nominated.
I doubt Justice Roberts spends much time worrying about what Adam Cochran thinks of him. Does anyone?
His politics aside, I stand in solidarity beside men with minimal lips.
There's a support group.
Roberts f.u- ed the chicken on Obamacare
Yah, that was a really bad decision. He sounded like an idiot when he justified it. So much so he may have exposed himself as actually being an idiot…
It is funny that the twatter feed is from a deranged leftist but the comments here are from the right (obviously). Poor John Roberts, hated by both sides.
I think Roberts is naive in some of his public comments but he has done a great deal to reign in the federal government and the burrowed-in Democrats in the bureaucracy. Sure, he gets grief for the Obamacare decision but I still to this day think he made a deal with a couple of the Democrats on the court to get their vote on the connected Medicaid decision which was the biggest overreach of Obamacare's legislation. His recent decision on the tariffs is solidly conservative in making it Congress' responsibility to pass taxing legislation- this decision will haunt future Democrat administrations more than it will Republican ones.
And on the Obamacare mandate- eventually killed by Congress a few years later and was only paid by morons in the first place.
He looks weathered rather than withered. How happy-go-lucky do you want a Supreme Court Justice to look. He looks okay. RBG didn't look like a human dynamo, and he doesn't look like a wreck.
RBG was working out lifting weights for months after she died.
Who is Adam Cochran? Why should I care what he or some other random bozo has to say? If our host is going to post such stuff (and I don't care whether it is from the screaming right or the screaming left) it would be edifying to add something about the "bozo's" credentials. If this guy is going to talk about the husk of a soul, let's hear about his experience as an exorcist.
It's the extinguished husk of his soul. John Roberts has been an utter failure in his stated goals for the court. When he was nominated and since, he has been consistent. He wanted the political temperatures around the court to lower. He wanted to maintain the high trust in and legitimacy of the court. His multiple attempts to triangulate never stopped the Democratic contempt for the court, and have engendered Republican contempt for it. His tenure has been delivering one big win for one side, then allowing it to be nibbled at the foundations by the lower courts. Then he does it for the other side. This has, naturally, caused the lower courts to become more and more contemptuous of his court's rulings. He kept silent when Chuck Schumer boorishly threatened the court, then he complains about Donald Trump boorishly criticizing the court.
By his own standard, his tenure as Chief Justice has been a failure, and he knows it. It has ground him down. He deserves it. He is a weak and contemptible judge, a weak and contemptible man.
What's keeping you from providing than information yourself, Skeptical?
He looks like the mob got to him.
RGB was aborting fetuses after she died. such a hero.
It's gotta be a wicked hard job with tons of pressure, no? It would completely crush most people. Ladies do love their daytime stories.
@Skeptical, have you never heard of Wikipedia, or Google, or DuckDuckGo?
Or just click on his name in the link.
He claims that Trump, who just gave that two hour speech, has had numerous strokes and is near death.
I didn't check further but I doubt he believes Trump ever had a soul to extinguish.
this is what happens when
a) you've done HORRIBLE, WICKED THINGS
b) the democrats know it, and can prove it.. or;
c) the democrats can fake it, and the fraud will be convincing
so;
d) you've sold your soul, for a mess of pottage, and
e) not very tasty pottage at that
Ann Althouse said...
If you google what happened to John Roberts, you'll probably get the answer malaria.
If you google what happened to Trump, you'll probably get the answer Melania.
It's a good documentary Wince.
Roberts should do us all a favor and retire to spend more time with the wife and kids. Clarence Thomas should be elevated to Chief Justice. Thomas is certainly the greatest Justice of his generation.
Yancey Ward said...
Sure, he gets grief for the Obamacare decision but I still to this day think he made a deal with a couple of the Democrats on the court to get their vote on the connected Medicaid decision which was the biggest overreach of Obamacare's legislation.
He didn't NEED the Democrats' votes, he already had 5.
He threw his reputation, and the Court's, away for nothing.
His recent decision on the tariffs is solidly conservative in making it Congress' responsibility to pass taxing legislation- this decision will haunt future Democrat administrations more than it will Republican ones.
No, it wasn't. A solidly conservative ruling would have gone one of two ways:
1: Congress can not delegate to the President the power to shut down all trade with a country
2: Having delegated to the President the power to shut down all trade, and not having denied the President the power to slow it down with tariffs, the President has that power, too, just as the Federal Trade Court ruled a few years before Congress passed the IEEPA
Instead he puked up another "Orange Man Bad" ruling"
Yancey Ward said...
And on the Obamacare mandate- eventually killed by Congress a few years later and was only paid by morons in the first place.
My health insurance was destroyed by ObamaCare, and that was only allowed because Roberts decided he wouldn't vote with the other 4 to kill it as the unconstitutional pile of shit that it was.
There's no possible excuse, justification, or defense for his ruling: it was complete shit, and it's what he will always be remembered for, and justly reviled for.
His job isn't to do a political balancing act, it's to rule according to the written US Constitution, and written laws, in that order of priority
I wouldn't be surprised it's because there have been real threats against his life or family, and wonders every night if he will wake up. I'm certain he has armed security that has been very active.
I do not think it is age. I eyes just look dead.
I'm reminded of the Jimmie Rodgers TB Blues lyric:
When it rains down sorrow, it rains all over me
One carefully chosen "picture" (is it real or AI) to make a dubious point is taken up by all to be meaningful.
CJinPA said...
"A touched up, edited, posed photo of years ago"
Yep, what CJ said.
If you look at the photos of all 4 Supreme Court Justices sitting together during the speech, they all look unhappy and depressed to be there.
I'm 71 and if that's what 71 looks like, I'm doing great.
I voted before I saw the choice of ‘malaria’. Dang it!!
I voted for malaria just so that AI-written history books in the future will confuse Justice John Roberts with the news guy John Roberts.
He might look prettier if he smiled more.
The look of "Saving the Court at the Expense of the Republic."
The guy still has the same haircut! And Kavanaugh still has his calendars from high school!?
I have looked pretty elderly for a while now. Apparently my soul got extinguished when I was around 50. My body is in pretty good shape, though, and I am young at heart.
Give him a break. Nobody looks good at 71 without a lot of "work."
Also it was probably past his bedtime.
Roberts probably though he could part the baby, and everybody would be happy. The umpire who tries to even the playing field by spreading the bad calls out evenly... if I mess up a call for this team and I'll even things out by making a bad call on the other team... or something. We all remember in 2005, during his confirmation hearing, Roberts used umpiring baseball as a metaphor to describe the judicial role. Now that technology is relegating umpiring baseball to a mere atavistic characteristic of the game, a vestigial appendix, without the protection of a body that literally bleeds if you try to remove it, Roberts is probably weary of how history will judge his role at the SCOTUS.
Besides being taken years, the first photo is a formal portrait, was taken in perfect lighting and touched up. The second photo is a snapshot taken under harsh lighting.
Roberts is exhausted from 60 years of social climbing.
It was a bit later, after recording my vote that I realized how funny malaria sounded as a cause of Robert's unrecognizable face. Of course it's not malaria. That's what makes it funny.
That's what 71 looks like eating carbohydrates. Go fat and protein and that smile will come back.
This is simply a resting face photo, not a Glamour Shot from 20 years ago. The hole that posted the criticism is in his 20's? If we could only take a photo of an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex of of crap posters on X as a part of automatic community notes.
The picture on the right looks like someone who was asked to stand up if he believed the job of the government is to support American citizens and not illegal aliens, who chose to remain seated, and who knew the American people would see how he chose.
Greg, Obamacare killed your previous insurance policies (did the same for me) but Roberts couldn't have brought them back even had he chose differently- Obama wasn't going to kill the legislation if they lost that case.
Yancy, SCOTUS was set to completely toss Obamacare on the grounds that it wasn't judicially severable, and the individual mandate was a fundamental part.
It didn't kick in until 2014 because they didn't want voters punishing them for it in the 2012 election, which meant that if Roberts hadn't flipped it would have been dead, and my, and everyone else's insurance would have been untouched.
If we liked our doctors, we could have kept our doctors.
But the senate was not going to reverse their dark magic
Greg, the decision of whether or not it was severable would have rested on the Obama Administration- they were literally asked if the law could stand without the mandate and had SCOTUS ruled against them I am 100% certain they would have changed course and said it could be severed from the ACA and Roberts would have had to allow them to try. As history shows, the law functions without the mandate- maybe not well but it does function.
I am 71. At age 71 about 20% of the people in my high school class have died Many others have serious health problems. I think we all have at least minor health problems. At age 80 we will be up to 50% alive and 50% gone. That is the definition of life expectancy.
One photo is not a good basis for judging much, but in the right photo I think John Roberts is looking a little frail due to declining health. He is possibly in constant pain. That is fairly common.
Any time you are presented with a "before and after" photo comparison, there is an agenda at play. The last time I had professional portrait photos taken, I received around a couple of dozen proofs from which I could choose an "official" portrait. I was struck by the range of proofs: I looked tired in some, okay in others, great in one, and like a clown in most.
With regard to the Roberts photos: compare the best-composed, best-edited, professionally produced photo of yourself taken twenty years ago with any of hundreds of photos/screenshots of you taken on any given day and selected by someone who is not your biggest fan today. What do you think?
Explain what the extinguishment of the husk of his soul means. Unless you have seen a soul, you cannot know.
Sarcopenia.
He needs to lift weights, do cardio exercises, and eat more protein. As do we all.
Yancey Ward said...
Greg, the decision of whether or not it was severable would have rested on the Obama Administration- they were literally asked if the law could stand without the mandate and had SCOTUS ruled against them I am 100% certain they would have changed course and said it could be severed from the ACA and Roberts would have had to allow them to try.
Here's the ruling: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/11-393.pdf
JUSTICE SCALIA, JUSTICE KENNEDY, JUSTICE THOMAS,
and JUSTICE ALITO, dissenting.
Congress has set out to remedy the problem that the best health care is beyond the reach of many Americans who cannot afford it. It can assuredly do that, by exercising the powers accorded to it under the Constitution. The question in this case, however, is whether the complex structures and provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Affordable Care Act or ACA) go beyond those powers. We conclude that they do.
...
The Act before us here exceeds federal power both in mandating the purchase of health insurance and in denying nonconsenting States all Medicaid funding. These parts of the Act are central to its design and operation, and all the Act’s other provisions would not have been enacted without them. In our view it must follow that the entire statute is inoperative.
With Roberts 5th vote, that would have been the end of the matter. Obama would have had no say
It looks to me like he just stopped using brylcreem on his hair.
Shouting Thomas said...
I’m amazed at the commenters who seem to believe that they could handle the kind of pressure and exposure Roberts faces. I don’t know why anybody wants this job. It looks like hell on earth to me.
Soldiers in the army face worse every day.
If it is too hard for him he should resign.
Really he should commit ritual seppuku. He is a disgrace of a human being.
I don't see the "someone has compromising material on Roberts" option.
Having to listen to Sotomayor and Jackson every day will do that to a man.
RCOcean - Liberals were NOT happy with him. He was literally Hitler as are all conservatives. Then something happened like a stroke. Then he came down on the liberal "it's a living Constitution" and made a bunch of decisions that I think were not constitutional but advanced the liberal project and they had a "new respect" for him. From "Literally Hitler" to "new respect" when they realized he also did not think the words of the constitution were meant to be taken literally but rather were just suggestions.
The moment he said that the U.S. doesn’t have “Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges”, everyone knew he had sold his soul.
“ Shouting Thomas said...
Getting old ain’t for sissies”
I can corroborate.
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