In just a few hours, at 5 PM on Saturday, Donald Trump will announce his third Supreme Court. With wide speculation that it might be Judge Amy Coney Barrett, we thought it would be good to look back at the last Supreme Court nominee, one that journalists worried would send “shivers” down the spines of liberals. At 7:23 PM ET on July 9, 2018, ABC’s Nightline tweeted that Trump’s Supreme Court nominee would be “controversial,” without even knowing who it was!
This led to an awkward correction tweet: “Tonight on Nightline, @TerryMoran reports on the controversy surrounding the Supreme Court Justice pick and the possible implications for the country.”
A few hours later, when it was revealed that the choice was Brett Kavanaugh, Nightline worried that the “reliably conservative” judge is sending “shivers” down the spines of liberals. Reporter Terry Moran labeled Kavanaugh “solidly conservative” and underlined, “Kavanaugh has been reliably conservative throughout most of his career dating back to 1989 when he was a student writing for the Yale Law Journal.”
Moran worried that the opening on the Court was “sending shockwaves through the nation and shivers down the spines of liberals, who had come to rely on [Anthony] Kennedy's swing vote on social issue.”
Over on MSNBC, Chris Hayes immediately started to freak out: “This is a guy who cut his teeth on the Starr report. He has moved in conservative, right-wing legal circles for the entirety of his career.” A few seconds later, Hayes again fretted that Kavanaugh “spent his life in conservative, right-wing legal circles.”
Who will Donald Trump’s third pick be? It doesn’t really matter for the liberal media. Whomever gets the nod, expect the woman to be dangerous and scarily conservative, according to journalists anyway.
For more examples from our FLASHBACK series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.
