Wednesday on his nationally syndicated radio program, conservative talk Rush Limbaugh hammered White House counsel Pat Cipollone for negotiating with Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) over President Donald Trump’s potential appointment to the left-leaning 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The story was first reported in a Wall Street Journal editorial earlier this week.

Transcript as follows:

Have you heard about the lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal today? Well, let me tell you about this. The new White House counsel apparently has been consulting with Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, negotiating with them on Trump judicial nominees for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals! It is pretty safe to say Trump may not know this is going on!

He’s a got a new White House counsel, and this White House counsel has been working with Kamala Harris and Feinstein, two senators from California, to the choose nominees that Trump would choose to be on the Ninth Circuit that meet their approval! What the hell! We run the Senate. We have 53 senators! The reason Trump ran — in addition to not doing amnesty and shutting down the border, building a wall and all that — was the courts! What in the name of Sam Hill is going on when somebody has to…?

Feinstein!

Feinstein is the one that when Amy Coney Barrett was up for nomination… She is on the shortlist for the next Supreme Court opening whenever that is and wherever it is. She was engaged in confirmation hearings for her current slot on the court that she currently sits on, and Dianne Feinstein’s looking at her and says (paraphrased), “The dogma is thick with you,” meaning, “You’re really a big Catholic.” Feinstein’s not Catholic. “The dogma is thick with you.” So we’ve got a little bit of an indication of how Feinstein is gonna approach Amy Coney Barrett if she’s nominated for the Supreme Court.

Well, why in the name of Sam Hill is somebody in the Trump administration negotiating with the people that lost in the Senate elections? Now, occasionally this happens. It does happen, but it’s a throwback to years gone by when there was at least the pretense of bipartisanship, cooperation, comity, and all that. But not during these hyperpartisan days where there’s no overlap of anything in common. You start negotiating with Feinstein and Kamala Harris and then senators from New York are gonna be the next ones that call you and demand to negotiate.

And then if you don’t negotiate with senators from New York, then senators from some other liberal state will be calling the White House, “Why won’t you negotiate with us? Why would you…?” They don’t get a say in this! That’s the whole point of winning the presidency! They don’t get a say in who judicial nominees are, and this is the Ninth Circuit! We’re trying to go deliberalize the Ninth Circuit as much as we can, and we’re giving Feinstein and Kamal Harris a say? Why are we doing this? What is the point? Does it not reside in, “We must show them that we’re able to cross the aisle.

“We must show them that we’re able to work together. We must show America that we’re not the racist, sexist, bigots they think.” This stupid, defensive premise that we accept that they say we are all these horrible things, so we must then try to prove that we’re not. It’s been tried for 30 years. It doesn’t work. They have to be beaten, not compromised with and not cooperated with. Not now, not today, not in this day and age, not when they are hell-bent for destroying this country as founded.

 

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