During the February 14 airing of Meet the Press, Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz said the Second Amendment would be “written out of the Constitution” during a Donald Trump presidency because of judicial choices Trump would make.
However, in an earlier segment during the very same airing of Meet the Press, Trump said the replacement justice he would seek for Antonin Scalia would be someone “tailored to be just like Justice Scalia.”
I would note, look, how do we know Donald Trump’s record on this is going to be bad? He has supported liberals for four decades: Jimmy Carter, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid. Anyone who cares about judges would not be supporting Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. And the consequence is, if either Hillary or Bernie or Donald Trump is the president, we will see the Second Amendment written out of the Constitution.
According to the same transcripts, Trump responded to questions about appointing a justice by saying:
I think you determine — look, you never know, you never know what happens, Chuck. You look at where a guy like Ted Cruz pushed very hard for Justice Roberts. Everyone thought that was wonderful. And Justice Roberts let everybody down by approving ObamaCare twice. I mean, he really did let us down. And that’s largely Cruz’s fault and the Bush fault, because they put the wrong guy in there. That was a shocking decision.
So, you know, you never really know. But at the time, he looked okay. But…that was a Ted Cruz mistake because he pushed him very hard. Look, we need great intellect. We need, I think absolutely conservative. But the real– I think the real plan forward would be somebody just like Justice Scalia.
In light of Trump’s support for another justice “just like Justice Scalia,” Breitbart News reached out to the Cruz campaign to ask if they could clarify the reasons for the criticism of Trump.
The Cruz campaign said, “Donald Trump has said his sister, an extreme left-wing judge, would be a ‘phenomenal’ Supreme Court Justice.” And they pointed us to a National Review article that contained a good rundown of her extreme positions on abortion.
Suffice it to say that if she or anyone like her became the 9th Justice, many of our rights that have been recently protected in 5-4 decisions — not the least of which was Heller — would be in jeopardy and likely written out of the Constitution. Couple Trump’s support for his sister as a Supreme Court Justice with past and current positions on partial birth abortion, gay marriage, and funding for Planned Parenthood, and the American people should be highly skeptical that he would appoint someone like Scalia.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.