During a prime time address to the nation on Tuesday, Donald Trump announced that Judge Neil Gorsuch would be his pick to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. While we will have to wait and see if journalists slime Gorsuch as some kind of “extreme” conservative, history tells us they didn’t like his "very controversial" mom either.
Anne Gorsuch Burford was Ronald Reagan’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Gorsuch cut the budget of the EPA by 22 percent and got rid of a number of staffers. On Monday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, Pete Williams reminded veteran journalist Andrea Mitchell of Neil Gorsuch’s family line: “[He is the] son of someone you know, Andrea.”
Mitchell retorted, “Very controversial. We should not visit the controversies of the mother on the son.” On February 16, 1983, the New York Times trashed the elder Gorsuch in the opinion section with this headline: "Mrs. Gorsuch Pollutes the E.P.A.”
The unsigned Times editorial assailed, “Mrs. Gorsuch is charged with protecting the nation's air, land and water from filth. Instead she has polluted the E.P.A.'s reputation for impartial administration of science and law. Only with her departure can repair of the damage begin.”
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Well-known liberal journalist Helen Thomas even mentioned Mrs. Gorsuch as one of the reasons not to like Ronald Reagan:
“He definitely had an agenda, and was a social Darwinist. ‘If you can’t make it, tough.’ Was, you know, survival of the fittest, this is the whole approach. He appointed people at the head of his, of departments and agencies who were against the premise of the agency. With [Anne] Gorsuch of the EPA, [James] Watt of, to Interior, who wanted to sell all of the Western lands to privatize and so forth. So the whole thing is that he really did think that government was the problem and not the solution, which he said to the very end. At the same time, he, I think, he obviously was well liked, and I think that the poor did not prosper under him at all.”
— Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas on CNBC’s Tim Russert, June 9, 2007.
After Neil Gorsuch's nomination went public on Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC played video of Gorsuch’s mom at the EPA. She ranted, “Judge Gorsuch's family has a famous political history because his mom ran the EPA for Ronald Reagan in a tenure that ended really, really badly and is a fascinating story. But that was his mom.”
During The 11th Hour, Brian Williams reminded, “Gorsuch is the son of Ronald Reagan's controversial head of the EPA.”
Will journalists treat the son like they did the mom? History says conservatives shouldn't expect objectivity.
A transcript of the exchange from Andrea Mitchell Reports is below:
Andrea Mitchell Reports
1/30/17
12:10PETE WILLIAMS: Neil Gorsuch from Denver, fourth generation Colorado. Son of someone you know, Andrea, Anne Gorsuch Burford, who was the head of the EPA under Ronald Reagan.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Very controversial. We should not visit the controversies of the mother on the son.
WILLIAMS: --- First woman in that job. Right. When she came here to take that job, he came along and was a page in the U.S. Senate in the same Senate page class Amy Carter.
