The future doesn’t look too hopeful from Joy Reid’s perspective. On Monday night’s episode of MSNBC’s The ReidOut, she warned her viewers of the impending “nightmare” of fresh Supreme Court nominations that would proceed from a second Donald Trump presidency.
Reid opened the segment with a clip of President Joe Biden’s interview at his Hollywood fundraiser, where he called the Supreme Court “out of kilter” and referred to the possibility of new justices as “one of the scariest parts” of a second Trump term.
Naturally, she wholeheartedly agreed as she anticipated the retirement of whom she considered “two of the most offensive justices,” Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, mockingly suggesting they would “just permanently go on vacations with their rich friends.”
Furthermore, Reid villainized Federalist Society founder Leonard Leo for his influence on the nominations. She called into question Leo’s list of preferred justices, telling her viewers, “Let me be blunt. You all should be very worried. These judges would lock us into a multi-generational nightmare.”
The reason for her terror? In Reid’s mind, the potential justices perfectly embody a liberal’s Hell-on-Earth, “a veritable who's who of young forced-birth, anti-LGBTQ activists who have made a living stripping away rights from minorities in America in the name of Christian nationalism.”
However, the “scariest of the list” was James Ho, a judge on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, whose judicial opinions Vox described as “Fox talking points, men's rights activism, Federalist Society fantasies, and discredited legal doctrines that are now taught to law students to warn them of the Supreme Court's worst mistakes.”
Most horrifically, according to Reid, “He has written that ‘abortion is the immoral, tragic, and violent taking of innocent human life’ and threw in that he views the ‘racial history of abortion advocacy as a tool of the eugenics movement.’”
For someone as race-obsessed as Joy Reid, it was shocking that she completely disregarded the fact of Planned Parenthood founder and eugenicist Margaret Sanger’s established and flagrantly racist views. Apparently, racism isn’t that big of a deal as long as abortion is allowed to exist.
Reid also invited legal analyst Joyce Vance to reemphasize her previous points. Vance stressed the importance of voting as a direct influence on Supreme Court nominations with the host considering the Supreme Court cases as a foretaste of a “worse” reality that could come about “with a 40-year-old version of Alito on the court.”
In spite of everything, Reid was right to dread the chance of a second Trump presidency which would effectively spell devastation for miserable liberals like herself.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
MSNBC’s The ReidOut
6/17/2024
07:41:52 PM EST
[Cuts to video]
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: The next president is likely to have two new Supreme Court nominees. Two more. Two more. He's already appointed two that have been very negative in terms of the rights of individuals. The idea that if he's re-elected he's going to appoint two more flying flags upside down is really–I really mean it.
JIMMY KIMMEL: Could this be–could this be the scariest part of all of it?
BIDEN: Well, I think it is one of the scariest parts. Look, the Supreme Court has never been as out of kilter as it is today.
[Cuts back to live]
JOY REID: He's right, of course. If Donald Trump wins, two of the most offensive judge–justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who also happen to be the oldest on the Court, would very likely retire. And just like in 2016, Leonard Leo, the founder of the Federalist Society and one of the most influential religious activists and Trump supporters, is waiting in the wings. Leo has already reshaped federal–the federal courts by hand-picking conservative judges and justices and his preferred list of wanta-be justices in a second Trump presidency is already out there.
Let me be blunt. You all should be very worried. These judges would lock us into a multi-generational nightmare. Fox spoke with a number of sources and the latest list is a veritable who's who of young forced-birth, anti-LGBTQ activists who have made a living stripping away rights from minorities in America in the name of Christian nationalism.
Top of the list is former Clarence Thomas clerk James Ho, who was placed on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by Trump and sworn in by the Supreme Court's kept man in his sugar-daddy Harlan Crow's private library. Vox describes Ho’s judicial opinions as “Fox talking points, men's rights activism, Federalist Society fantasies, and discredited legal doctrines that are now taught to law students to warn them of the Supreme Court's worst mistakes.” He has written that “abortion is the immoral, tragic, and violent taking of innocent human life” and threw in that he views the “racial history of abortion advocacy as a tool of the eugenics movement.”
Joining me now is Joyce Vance, former US attorney, professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, and MSNBC legal analyst.
And Joyce, James Ho–Judge Ho–is the scariest of the list. But there are others. Um, your thoughts on the idea that–because I think it would take about two days for Thomas and Alito to retire and just permanently go on vacations with their rich friends if Trump got in and people like James Ho would be on the Court for a decade–or, I mean, I’m sorry, for a generation.
JOYCE VANCE: So I think the important thing that everyone needs to understand, Joy, is that the Supreme Court is on the ballot. And this is an issue that Republicans have done a good job with their voters for over the decades, reminding them even if the presidential candidate or the Senate candidate isn't your cup of tea, it's important that you vote for them because that's, in essence, is how we appoint federal judges and especially the Supreme Court. And Democrats who operate under a much broader tent and don't always rally their voters in that same way, haven't necessarily done that. I think the choice becomes very stark this election go-round. What do you want the Supreme Court to look like for the next generation?
REID: You're absolutely right. This isn't even about Biden anymore. At this point, it’s literally about these Court vacancies and who gets to fill them.
Here's some of the questions outstanding just for this current court. Can abusers–physical abusers have guns? Um, can the federal government block the deal with Purdue Pharma because the deal exempts the Sackler family, who did it, from legal liability? Can hospitals perform emergency abortions to protect the life of a mother or not? Can federal courts continue a doctrine that defers to a federal agency's interpretation of unclear statutes? And here’s the two big ones: Are “obstruction of an official proceeding”–which a lot of insurrectionists were charged with–is that too broad of a charge? And is Donald Trump protected under absolute presidential immunity, meaning he cannot be prosecuted?
Those kinds of cases are going to keep coming, Joyce, and they could only get worse and worse and with a 40-year-old version of Alito on the Court.
VANCE: So a federal judge from a party that's not the party that I served under as a U.S. attorney once said to me that in 99 percent of all cases, competent people who are appointed to the federal bench will reach the right result, and no one is worried about those cases. It's the one percent of cases that are highly politicized that we worry about. What we're entitled to as Americans is judges who set aside the party that appointed them to the bench and look solely at the facts and the law and make their ruling on that basis. But something that we have seen–and look, to be fair, this happens with judges who come from both political backgrounds–but what we have seen over the last few years is results-oriented judging from Trump appointees, from other conservative judges on the bench. It's disturbing to see 50 years of precedent stripped out when Roe v. Wade is reversed by judges who before they became justices told the Senate that they believed that Roe was superprecedent, that it was firm and binding precedent.
REID: Yeah.
VANCE: And so, I think what we're all looking for is a way of right-sizing the judiciary so the public can have confidence in it again.
(...)
