Rachel Maddow blasted Donald Trump and his Republican loyalists on Monday night for killing the independence of the United States Supreme Court in a single presidential term.
The MSNBC host said that Trump has put his stain on all three of his Supreme Court appointments, effectively transforming the court into another political body with zero credibility.
“In President Trump’s less than four years in office, Mitch McConnell has arranged for President Trump to have two Supreme Court nominees confirmed before tonight and a third confirmed tonight,” Maddow said. “In both of those instances, Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh, they were both sworn in at the White House, at lavish White House ceremonies overseen from inches away by the president himself.”
“The president making sure he was in every shot, including the money shot of the hand on the Bible and the other hand in the air,” she added. “This is not exactly meant to be a great signal of the independence and apolitical nature of the judiciary.”
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Rachel Maddow says Donald Trump and his Republican enablers have effectively killed the concept of an apolitical, independent Supreme Court. #maddow pic.twitter.com/io2GJvBzWn
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) October 27, 2020
Maddow said:
In President Trump’s less than four years in office, Mitch McConnell has arranged for President Trump to have two Supreme Court nominees confirmed before tonight and a third confirmed tonight. The vacancy created by the death of Justice Scalia happened during President Obama’s time in office, but Senator McConnell wouldn’t allow President Obama to fill that seat. He instead held it open until Trump was there. That was the first opening. They then brokered the second opening, the retirement of Justice Kennedy to make another vacancy for Trump to fill. And in both of those instances, Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh, they were both sworn in at the White House, at lavish White House ceremonies overseen from inches away by the president himself. The president making sure he was in every shot, including the money shot of the hand on the Bible and the other hand in the air. Both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh sworn in at the White House at big, lavish events marked by the presence of the president and lots of chest-thumping from the all-Republican crowds invited to gloat over it. Well, this president has also had a third Supreme Court nomination engineered for him by Senator Mitch McConnell after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg even though it was very shortly before the election and McConnell supposedly had a standard that there shouldn’t be votes on new Supreme Court justices in election years. He nevertheless rushed to get Amy Coney Barrett in as a third Trump nominee. And tonight as Amy Coney Barrett was rushed through the process in lightning-fast, record time, nominated, forced through the confirmation process like a hot knife through butter, voted on tonight — the vote was 52-48. Only one Republican senator siding with the Democrats against her. It was all Republican votes in favor of her. Tonight, following this vote, Amy Coney Barrett will be sworn in naturally at the White House, presumably with Donald Trump hovering approximately one centimeter away, because who are we kidding? This is not exactly meant to be a great signal of the independence and apolitical nature of the judiciary.
On Monday night, Republicans in the Senate voted to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Voters have the opportunity to make Trump, GOP pay
For all the questions that Joe Biden and other Democrats have fielded about whether they would expand the Supreme Court, it is Donald Trump and the Republicans who have spent the past four years packing the judiciary.
Not only has the GOP packed it, but they’ve completely undermined the idea of an apolitical, independent court. They have turned the Supreme Court into a blatantly political entity that will pursue the GOP’s assault on health care, women’s rights, gay rights, voting rights and more.
Donald Trump and his Republican lapdogs in the Senate have stained the Supreme Court in a way that won’t be undone for generations. In just eight days, voters will have the opportunity to make them pay.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.