Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson spoke on Senate Democrats focus on the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearings, which has revolved around Coney’s view on the Affordable Care Act.
According to Carlson, that was evidence those Democrats viewed the high court in political terms.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Happy Columbus Day. If you’ve been out celebrating the discovery of America, you may have missed the first round of Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings.
So how were the hearings? Well, we watched. In a word, we put it this way, bizarre. Bizarre for this reason.
Almost none of the attacks on Barrett — and of course, there are many of those — had anything to do with the job she is trying to get. The Supreme Court exists only to determine what the laws that our politicians write are consistent with the Constitution of the United States. That’s why we have the Supreme Court, it’s the only reason we have it.
Supreme Court Justices do not make laws because they are not elected by voters. We don’t let them legislate as a result. That’s how democracy works. Only people who are elected, get to make laws.
Democrats would like to change that system. They understand that Congress is an inherently small “c” conservative body. Congress is never going to change the country overnight in some radical way because voters don’t want radical overnight change. They never do.
So if you’re going to have a revolution, if you’re going to remake America, you’re going to have to do it from above, and you’re going to have to impose it on people. And the left would like to use the Supreme Court as their instrument to do that, a kind of super Congress with lifetime tenure.
Imagine power like that. There’s nothing you couldn’t do.
So once you understand that perspective, which is very much their perspective, today’s hearings made sense.
Democrats spent hours talking about the 2009 Obamacare law. That was baffling at first. If you’re interviewing someone for the Supreme Court, there’s only one relevant question about Obamacare. Is it constitutional? That’s all they consider. That’s all they’re supposed to consider, not how they feel about the law, not whether it comports with their personal values, not whether their party supports it. Is it constitutional?
And yet that was one of the few things that Democrats didn’t ask because they are not interested in whether or not it’s constitutional. What they care about is power and whether or not Amy Coney Barrett will diminish or enhance theirs.
So they understand the Supreme Court purely in political terms. So not surprisingly, they conducted today’s hearings like a campaign rally.
“Healthcare for millions of Americans is at stake,” barked one finger-wagging senator from California. Another Democrat pointed to a photo of a middle-aged woman called Laura who looks very unhappy. Without Obamacare, the senator said, Laura will be, quote, “unable to afford the treatments necessary for her to survive.” In other words, if any Amy Coney Barrett gets this job, it is curtains for Laura.
Democrat after Democrat made that very same point, as they so often have recently: obey us or many will die.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): You know that they are trying to push through a Justice who has been critical of upholding the Affordable Care Act.
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA): The effort to dismantle the law continues, and they are asking the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act.
SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): Your nomination is about the Republican goal of repealing the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, they seem to detest.
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), DEMOCRATIC VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: They are deliberately defying the will of the people in their attempt to roll back the rights and protections provided under the Affordable Care Act.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Well, it sounds like Obamacare is going away if ACB gets on the court. But it’s not actually. That’s the amazing thing. Obamacare isn’t really at risk.
There is no case currently pending anywhere in this country before any court in America that would eliminate Obamacare, nor by the way, do we have any idea how Amy Coney Barrett would rule in a case like that where it to materialize, which again, it hasn’t.
But most bewildering of all, Democrats themselves have spent most of the past two years publicly conceding that Obamacare is a disaster.
Six of the 10 Democrats currently as of today, sitting on the Judiciary Committee in the Senate, that’s the same committee that convened today to consider Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination, six of the 10 co-sponsored Medicare-for-All legislation. That legislation would have completely abolished Obamacare, along with all private health insurance.
Kamala Harris is one of the people who voted for that — amazing — and yet there was Kamala Harris today, warning us that the country will collapse if Amy Coney Barrett votes on a hypothetical case to destroy Obamacare, which she herself voted to destroy.
What?
It all seems kind of confusing. But think about it for a second and it begins to make more sense. When you realize the goal is not to preserve Obamacare, again, they voted to scrap Obamacare. The goal is to undermine the legitimacy of our systems, and in this case, of the Supreme Court so that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can pack the court full of partisan Democrats who will rubber-stamp their program.
Again, it’s about power. Oh, that’s the key to the riddle.
When confirmation hearings become partisan political exercises, they make the Supreme Court itself seem like a partisan political exercise and that degrades the public’s trust in the court and their support for our institutions.
Democrats know that for the public to go along with court-packing, they have to de-legitimize everything about the court and the confirmation process, and so that’s what they did today, again and again.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D-RI): Lost in this hypocritical rush is the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Let me close by remembering her for a minute in this unseemly charade.
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): This is a charade when they say this is a normal Judiciary Committee hearing.
BLUMENTHAL: Rushing a judge through this sham process.
SEN. MAZIE HIRONO (D-HI): They are confident that victory at the Supreme Court is now within their grasp if the Senate confirms Judge Barrett through this hypocritical, illegitimate process.
KLOBUCHAR: Yes, Judge, I think this hearing is a sham.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, because in a democracy, and you probably learned this in Civics class — in a democracy, you’re required to obey the posthumous orders of a dead person who was never elected. Okay. And when you don’t, it’s a sham. It’s a charade.
Never mind the fact that the Senate is of course, by definition following every constitutional procedure for filling a Supreme Court vacancy.
Amy Coney Barrett isn’t the outcome though the Democrats want; therefore, our system they are telling us is illegitimate.
The irony, of course, is that it’s Donald Trump who is undermining our democratic norms. Remember that? They tell you that at every turn. And yet it’s not Trump who tried to pack the Supreme Court. He could have tried when Republicans controlled Congress. He didn’t consider packing the Supreme Court.
Now Democrats are planning to, and it’s a familiar path. Hugo Chavez packed the Supreme Court of Venezuela in 2004. Erdogan did the same in Turkey. How did they do that? How did they get their populations to go along with it? By claiming their judicial systems were already illegitimate. Sound familiar?
On Saturday, Joe Biden stumbled through the same rehearsed line you heard from Kamala Harris during the debate last week. Republicans have already packed the court, Joe Biden declared. Yes, we’ve had nine justices for more than 150 years. And yet somehow, without anyone noticing, Trump packs the Supreme Court. He did.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The only court-packing going on right now is going on with Republicans packing the court now. It is not constitutional what they are doing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: They’re the ones violating the Constitution says Joe Biden. So, when I rewrite the Constitution, it’ll be fine. That’s the predicate. That’s the setup for what’s coming next.
Joe Biden knows Republicans aren’t packing the court. He also knows he can repeat that lie with no consequences whatsoever because the media will never hold him to account. They want him to get away with it.
Back in 2013, when it helped Barack Obama, a partisan operation called PolitiFact wrote, quote, “Court-packing has involved one branch of government proposing to change the structure of the courts, either expanding or decreasing the number of justices.”
The Republicans are not doing that. It’s pretty simple. They’re not in favor of doing that. If they ever come out in favor of doing it, we will attack them for doing it, because we’re not partisan.
But of course, you won’t find a PolitiFact fact check of what Joe Biden just said on Saturday. Instead, our media actually rushed to perpetuate his lies. Whatever it takes, whatever it takes.
So this weekend, a piece by the Associated Press, referred to court-packing, non-sarcastically, they weren’t joking at all as, quote, “depoliticizing the court.” You increase the size of the court to dilute the other side’s power. You pack it full of partisans who do your bidding, and that’s de-politicizing it.
Here’s how the AP put it quote: “Montana Senate candidate Steve Bullock said that if Coney Barrett was confirmed, he would be open to measures to de-politicize the court, including adding judges to the bench, a practice critics have dubbed packing the court.”
Yes, no, not critics, scholars, historians, politicians, Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself, every person in America referred to court-packing as court-packing up until two weeks ago. Right. It’s hard to believe that line made it into print, but it did. Court-packing is just de-politicizing the court now. You’ll probably see that definition formalized in the AP’s next woke-style guide next to their entries on undocumented shoppers and peaceful riots.
Fundamentally though, the AP is onto something inadvertently. Many judges and justices in this country are obviously political. They have a lot of power, too much power, more power than any individual should have.
Power in this country should reside with the electorate. People who are elected should have the most power not people who are appointed. Unelected judges shouldn’t be deciding issues like abortion and immigration policy for the entire country, but they are.
The solution to that is not to embrace more politics in your judicial branch, though, it’s to recognize the proper role of the courts, to de-escalate a little bit, to bring us a little closer to sanity.
In a brief moment toward the end of today’s hearing, in her opening statement, Amy Coney Barrett tried to do exactly that. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JUDGE AMY CONEY BARRETT, U.S. SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: Courts have a vital responsibility to the rule of law, which is critical to a free society. But courts are not designed to solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life.
The policy decisions and valued judgments of government must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the people.
The public should not expect courts to do so and courts should not try.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So these hearings of Amy Coney Barrett will continue for the next couple of days, barring some really dramatic development that it’s hard to even to imagine. It does seem very likely that she will be confirmed in the end, so there’s not a lot of drama, at least as of tonight surrounding her nomination.
What happens to the Supreme Court itself, however, is very much in doubt, and along with it, our country.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor