On Tuesday, some private letters belonging to former liberal Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens were released to the public. Some of the letters were related to Bush v. Gore, which gave the cast of CNN This Morning the chance on Wednesday to relitigate the case because, apparently, election denialism is okay when liberals do it. Additionally, it would be argued that Stevens was proven correct when he claimed the ruling would damage the Court’s reputation.
Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic claimed that the justices handed the election to Bush, “And in Bush v. Gore that you asked about, you know, that 5-4 opinion that came down late on the night of December 12, 2000, deciding the election, giving George W. Bush the White House over then-Vice President Al Gore was an unsigned opinion. We weren't sure exactly who truly influenced it.”
Biskupic then went on to claim that the papers reveal that while “the actual writing was done by Anthony Kennedy,” he “was using a framework that was provided by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.”
Kennedy and O’Connor, “worked together, again, to give Bush the White House, but also to rob Chief Justice William Rehnquist of a theory that he was pushing that would have, frankly, really empowered state legislatures at the expense of state courts and state constitutions.”
After the 2000 election, the Miami Herald and USA Today conducted a study that showed that Bush’s margin of victory would’ve been even higher if the Supreme Court had allowed the Florida Supreme Court’s order had been allowed to remain.
CNN, of course, declined to mention this. Biskupic did mention that, “even mild-mannered Anthony Kennedy was saying, you know, You -- you liberal dissenters who are saying that the integrity of the Court will be -- will be lost, you're just putting forward something that will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Co-host Poppy Harlow sought to confirm that self-fulfilling prophecy, however, when she claimed “It's fascinating, especially when you think of the Stevens dissent in Bush v. Gore, the last line, ‘Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.’ That was then. We're 23 years past that now.”
Fellow co-host Kaitlan Collins added, “What a foreshadowing that was.”
If anyone foreshadowed anything, it was Kennedy because liberals cannot acknowledge they lost to a man whose intelligence they would go onto insult for eight years.
This segment was sponsored by Subaru.
Here is a transcript for the May 3 show:
CNN This Morning
5/3/2023
6:27 AM ET
JOAN BISKUPIC: And in Bush v. Gore that you asked about, you know, that 5-4 opinion that came down late on the night of December 12, 2000, deciding the election, giving George W. Bush the White House over then-Vice President Al Gore was an unsigned opinion. We weren't sure exactly who truly influenced it.
And what we see is that the actual writing was done by Anthony Kennedy, but he was using a framework that was provided by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court, and a woman who herself was steeped in politics, because she was in Arizona state legislature and I love to say that she came to Washington knowing how to count votes, and she truly did.
And they worked together, again, to give Bush the White House, but also to rob Chief Justice William Rehnquist of a theory that he was pushing that would have, frankly, really empowered state legislatures at the expense of state courts and state constitutions.
So we got to see all that, plus some of the tensions behind the scenes. You know, just as Antonin Scalia, who was in the majority, famously used to tell the public, get over it. And we see some of -- we saw yesterday some of what he was writing to his colleagues about how angry he was at dissenters.
But even mild-mannered Anthony Kennedy was saying, you know, You -- you liberal dissenters who are saying that the integrity of the Court will be -- will be lost, you're just putting forward something that will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
POPPY HARLOW: It's fascinating, especially when you think of the Stevens dissent in Bush v. Gore, the last line, "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."
That was then. We're 23 years past that now.
BISKUPIC: You know, Poppy, and it was Bush v. Gore seemed such -- so unusual, so unprecedented and that language that you just read from Justice Stevens seemed such a departure from what -- how justices would speak at the time. Now, it's almost like an everyday occurrence among outside critics of the Supreme Court, but also among some justices inside. The -- you know, the integrity of the Supreme Court, its vaunted impartiality are really being questioned today in a way that, back in the year 2000 was unusual. You're definitely right, Poppy.
KAITLAN COLLINS: What a foreshadowing that was.
HARLOW: Thanks, Joan.
BISKUPIC: It was.
