Amid CNN’s analysis of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh on Monday night, their senior legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin requested that the panel think about how Obama SCOTUS nominee Merrick Garland and Hillary Clinton must feel watching the announcement.
After speaking with one of Judge Kavanaugh’s former clerks who gave personal insight into the nominee, Toobin interrupted and asked the panel to “think about two people who watched tonight... Brett Kavanaugh is a judge on the D.C. Circuit. You know who the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit is? It's Merrick Garland. How do you think he feels today?”
Toobin touted Garland as a “class act” and noted, “[h]e's moved on with his life”. But he huffed about how Garland “never got the moment that Kavanaugh is going to get. He got the moment of being announced, but he never got” a vote in the Senate.
The second person Toobin wanted everyone to think about was Hillary Clinton. “I mean, Brett Kavanaugh made his name by investigating not just the Starr—not just Whitewater but the Monica Lewinsky part, the sexual details,” he bemoaned. “The tawdry, sorted, deep and dark stuff,” host Chris Cuomo added.
“And his, you know, making his name for himself got him on the trajectory that he is today,” Toobin said of Kavanaugh’s work in the 90’s. He also tried to imagine how Hillary felt “watch[ing] yet another Supreme Court nomination that she thought she was going to [get]”.
Expanding off of Toobin, CNN legal analyst and Supreme Court biographer Joan Biskupic was curious about how Judge Thomas Hardiman (another potential pick for President Trump) might feel since it was the second time he was passed over for the position on the court.
Cuomo responded by suggesting it gave insight into Trump’s mindset and claimed he couldn’t figure out why Trump “said he liked [Hardiman’s] personal story”.
According to the CNN host, Trump shouldn’t like Hardiman’s life story of struggling to pay for law school because it had nothing to do with him. “Oh, I get why his story is impressive. I don't know why it resonated with Trump when it has nothing to do with his own personal story,” he chided.
Of course, Toobin and Biskupic thought Cuomo was hilarious and roared with laughter.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
CNN
Cuomo Prime Time
July 9, 2018
9:54:07 PM Eastern(…)
JEFFREY TOOBIN: Can I just make -- we're talking about personal points.
CHRIS CUOMO: Yeah.
TOOBIN: Think about two people who watched tonight. Brett Kavanaugh is a judge on the D.C. Circuit. You know who the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit is? It's Merrick Garland. How do you think he feels today? I mean, Merrick Garland is a class act. He's moved on with his life, but the idea that he never got the moment that Kavanaugh is going to get. He got the moment of being announced, but he never got -- the other person is –
CUOMO: Trump’s sister.
TOOBIN: Trump's sister, whose advice was not taken. But Hillary Clinton. I mean, Brett Kavanaugh made his name by investigating not just the Starr—not just Whitewater but the Monica Lewinsky part, the sexual details.
CUOMO: The tawdry, sorted, deep and dark stuff.
TOOBIN: And his, you know, making his name for himself got him on the trajectory that he is today. And Hillary Clinton has to watch yet another Supreme Court nomination that she thought she was going to be able to…
(…)
CUOMO: Well, it's also insight into the fact that just because the President says he's into something doesn't mean it's the way it's going to go. He said he liked his personal story that it was the reporting given to us.
JAKE TAPPER: About Hardiman.
CUOMO: Right, even though I don't know why cause it's not Trump's personal story.
TAPPER: Because it’s am up from his bootstraps…
CUOMO: Oh, I get why his story is impressive. I don't know why it resonated with Trump when it has nothing to do with his own personal story.
[Laughter]
(…)
