On Saturday’s edition of MSNBC’s The Weekend, hosts and guests alike bemoaned Biden’s failure to seek to pack the Supreme Court.
Their comments came in response to oral arguments at the Court this past week on the case regarding Trump’s claim of presidential immunity. The panel expressed fears that the Court might expand presidential immunity — if not to the extent of the right to assassinate political rivals, as Trump’s lawyer suggested could be an immune act.
Co-host Alicia Menendez teed up the packing notion, saying that in light of what happened in the Court last week, clearly something “structural”–packing or court “reform” is necessary.
Guest Ankush Khadori strongly agreed, calling Biden’s failure to push for packing a “historic political miscalculation.”
Co-anchor Symone Sanders Townsend, mentioning that she had worked for Biden, said that he is someone who believes in “the rule of law.” But Sanders suggested that it is “time to do things differently.” Again Khadori agreed, flatly saying that in supporting the rule of law, Biden “is holding the wrong view. I hate to say that about the president. He’s been wrong about this the whole time.”
Wait a second! Isn’t the Democrats’ big beef against Trump that he refuses to accept the rule of law?
But discarding the rule of law is a good—indeed a necessary—thing if it benefits Democrats?
Khadori claimed “this Court, over the last few years, is systematically running roughshod through our Constitution. They, in just the last few years, they overturned Roe, they’ve invalidated affirmative action in higher education, and they basically legalized same sex discrimination. They threw out part of the Biden administration’s signature domestic policy effort on the student loan forgiveness plan.”
But even legal scholars on the left have acknowledged that Roe was poorly decided. Indeed, MSNBC’s own legal analyst Danny Cevallos opined, before the Dobbs decision came down, that Roe was “ripe” to be overturned because “the right to privacy [upon which Roe was based] does not exist either in the history or the text of the Constitution, and that Roe “stands on a weak foundational basis.”
As for affirmative action, the phrase itself is a euphemism for reverse racial discrimination, a clear-cut violation of the Equal Protection clause and legislative prohibitions of racial discrimination. The “student loan forgiveness” Biden has granted by ignoring Congress and court rulings against him. Who’s “running roughshod through our Constitution” again?
Here’s the transcript.
MSNBC
The Weekend
4/27/24
8:22 am EDTALICIA MENENDEZ: If you were part of the 70% of Americans who agree that the president should not have absolute immunity, and then you watched what transpired this week in court, what is left as recourse, right? There’s court reform, there’s stacking the Court? What do you see as the path forward, because clearly something more structural is necessary.
ANKUSH KHADORI: Yeah, I agree with that. I think, actually, as we think about this administration and its legacy, I think it was — it will go down as having been a historic political miscalculation.
MENENDEZ: You’re talking about the Biden administration.
KHADORI: Biden administration, to not have made a real, earnest effort at Supreme Court reform. They put together a commission that produced a report that nobody read. It was not a serious effort to actually pursue Supreme Court reform, and now —
SYMONE SANDERS TOWNSEND: Why? Because the president, President Biden, I mean, I worked for him at that time. I was a part of the transition, and I worked in the White House, and I know for a fact, and Eugene, you’ve been asking the questions too — I was there.
He himself does not believe that that is an avenue that should be explored. Joe Biden is somebody that believes that, in the rules of law and laws the systems. And one could argue, I [inaudiable], whew!–it’s time, it’s time to do things differently.
KHADORI: Well look. I mean, yeah, I am aware he has that view. He is holding the wrong view. I hate to say that about the president. He’s been wrong about this the whole time.
And now, this Court, over the last few years, is systematically running roughshod through our Constitution. They, in just the last few years, they overturned Roe, they’ve invalidated affirmative action in higher education, and they basically legalized same sex discrimination. They threw out part of the Biden administration’s signature domestic policy effort on the student loan forgiveness plan.
And now they seem poised to issue some sort of ruling that will change the law which has already been in place for a couple hundred years. We all assumed a president could be criminally charged after he, leaving office, to now come up
with some crazy new doctrine. And —MENENDEZ: To say nothing of the Idaho case that they are listening to right now, which is like all of their chickens coming home to roost.
SANDERS TOWNSEND: Yeah, and its like yeah, we don’t want to save women.
KHADORI: All of the cases coming back to them after Dobbs is a mess. And this, this immunity ruling, if it comes out as most of us are expecting, it will go down in history as a practical effect, as a practical matter, as a sequel to Bush versus Gore.