Judge Judy is 30 years deep into television and she is still not the one. Judy Sheindlin sat down with USA Today ahead of CBS’s primetime special celebrating three decades of “Judge Judy,” and instead of a cute retrospective, she shared a little message for anybody who’s been dragging America while never once thinking about packing a bag.
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Sheindlin told USA Today that despite the nation’s imperfections, she remains proud of America and does not believe people should seek to fundamentally remake the country into something else. “If you don’t like this country, go somewhere else,” she said. “Don’t come to the greatest country in the world, the most successful country in the world and say, ‘I want to change it.'”
She didn’t stop there either. Before she even got to the “go somewhere else” part, she made it personal. “I have a house, and I have a home. I consider America my home. America has been good to me. I think that it’s the greatest country in the world,” Sheindlin said, before adding the line that’s now all over timelines: “There are other countries that are the something else that you want. Go there. Go there. But don’t come into my home and say, ‘I want to change it.’ Go there. Go there.”
The special looks back at Sheindlin’s career and ahead to what’s next, including her plans to step back from on-camera work and shift into “Judyverse,” an animated series she’s writing, producing and voicing. CBS aired the 90-minute special “Judge Judy: Unfiltered, Unforgettable” to commemorate the 30th anniversary of her TV debut, with the program examining her career and featuring appearances from family, friends and entertainment figures.
Now, before y’all say she was just being petty for no reason, context matters here. USA Today reports that Sheindlin was specifically railing against socialism during the wide-ranging interview at her Greenwich, Connecticut home, praising the American system for encouraging brilliance and excellence, and pointing to the polio vaccine, Apple, Amazon and advances in artificial intelligence as products of a culture that rewards people who build, invent and achieve. So this wasn’t a random rant, it was her whole worldview, laid out plain.
But Judge Judy being Judge Judy, she wasn’t just talking about the country, she was talking about herself too, and how she’s operated her entire career. “I came to decisions based upon what I saw and what I knew was both legal and morally correct,” she told USA Today. “Sometimes I took risks and I still take risks. You could just bask in the admiration. But as you see from this interview, I’m still willing to take a risk.”
The original “Judge Judy” premiered in 1996 and ran for 25 seasons before ending in 2021, and Sheindlin later returned with “Judy Justice,” which is set to conclude in October as she steps away from regular on-camera work. So this isn’t her signing off quietly. Thirty years in, she’s leaving the same way she came in: direct, unbothered, and completely certain she’s right.