Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson opened his Friday broadcast with a warning about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris regarding potential plans of court-packing if they are elected on November 3.
According to Carlson, the objective is to change the American form of government, and he urged Republican lawmakers to be concerned.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: For a guy who has been in politics all of his life, Joe Biden has never learned to lie very well. You think he would have picked up some flair over the years, given the extensive practices had, but no. Biden still tells whoppers like a child, like that insecure fat kid in your sixth-grade class who was always bragging about how his dad was a secret agent, when actually he worked in insurance.
So there was a scary gang guy called Corn Pop, he was going to kill me. So I beat him with a chain, then I went to South Africa to free Nelson Mandela from jail, but a bunch of Nazis arrest me at the airport, but I fought them off and — okay, Joe, you say to yourself.
You’re kind of embarrassed for the guy. It’s just so transparent and dumb. But Biden isn’t embarrassed. He assumes you believe him or maybe he is so deep in his internal fantasy world, he doesn’t care what you think.
Either way, he keeps going tall tale after tall tale. And then I went to a segregated black college, top of my class. The guys there love me.
The whole thing is weird, it’s a little sad. What’s interesting, though, are those moments in which Joe Biden doesn’t lie, when instead he decides to tell the truth in the face of criticism. That’s not an easy thing to do for a man who is desperate to be loved. So you’ve got to ask yourself, why is he doing it? It’s happening right now. It’s interesting.
Repeatedly, Biden has been asked in recent weeks whether he plans to pack the Supreme Court with partisan Democrats if he is elected. The answer is obvious. Of course, I would never do that. I’m not a radical. I’m moderate. I’m from Scranton. You can trust me.
And in fact, that’s essentially the answer Biden has given on a bunch of different issues like a fracking ban or the Green New Deal. He used to support those things. Now, he claims he doesn’t support them. It’s an election year, he wants to win, he’ll say anything.
But again, what’s weird is that Biden isn’t trying to reassure you that he won’t pack the Supreme Court. Most Americans don’t want them to do that. They don’t want to destroy an entire branch of government and turn into a political judiciary. They know that’s a bad idea.
But again, Biden is refusing to reassure them. What does that tell you? It tells you that packing the Supreme Court is the one thing Joe Biden is certain to do if he is elected.
Listen to his answer on the question from yesterday. Notice, he doesn’t even bother with a colorful story. Here it is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: You’ll know my opinion on court-packing when the election is over. Now, look, I know it is a great question, you all, and I don’t blame you for asking. But you know, the moment I answer that question, the headline in every one of your paper will be about that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: We showed that clip to you last night. We just showed it to you again, because we wanted to make sure it was really weren’t imagining it. It’s that strange. Biden’s official articulated planned out scripted position is that voters are not entitled to know what he will do to their government if they elect him, which if you think about it is itself a pretty clear answer to the question.
It’s not like he’s never thought about the subject of packing the court. Joe Biden sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee for decades, famously. At one point, this specific issue came up during a hearing. Here’s what Biden said about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN, THEN U.S. SENATOR: President Roosevelt clearly had the right to send to the United States Senate and the United States Congress a proposal to pack the court. It was totally within his right to do that.
He violated no law. He was legalistically absolutely correct. But it was a bonehead idea.
It was a terrible, terrible mistake to make, and it put in question for an entire decade the independence of the most significant body, including the Congress, in my view, the most significant body in this country, the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: It was legalistically correct. Even then, Biden was inarticulate. But he did say very clearly, court-packing is a quote, “terrible, terrible mistake.” It would ruin the integrity of the judicial branch.
That’s not a profound insight, in fact, it’s the consensus view of historians and judges and has been for decades. Once again, poll show Americans agree, they oppose court-packing. It’s not a partisan issue. It’s common sense. The system has worked this way for hundreds of years. Let’s not wreck it now.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg of all people had the same view and she said so just last year.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUTH BADER GINSBURG, U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE: I have heard that there are some people on the Democratic side who would like to increase the number of judges. I think that was a bad idea when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to pack the court. If anything, it would make the court appear partisan, it would be one side saying when we’re in power, it was only to enlarge the number.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, so that’s one of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s final wishes that we’re ignoring, apparently. But it’s pretty inconvenient, nevertheless.
So how is the Biden campaign explaining this way? Well, they put some thought into the question just before the last vice presidential debate, the Biden campaign apparently got an intern to Google up some facts to justify court-packing. They came up with Abraham Lincoln, probably a few minutes before Kamala Harris took the stage. They handed her the notes and she repeated it. Here’s what she said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), DEMOCRATIC VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Abraham Lincoln was up for re-election, and it was 27 days before the election, and a seat became open on the United States Supreme Court.
Abraham Lincoln’s party was in charge not only the White House, but the Senate. But Honest Abe said, it’s not the right thing to do. The American people deserve to make the decision about who will be the next President of the United States and then that person can select who will serve for a lifetime on the highest court of our land.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So that’s Kamala Harris’s version of American history. It’s not correct. Not surprisingly. She really mentions it, but Harris actually didn’t grow up in this country. She moved to Quebec when she was 12 and she didn’t come back until after high school.
So if the question is, what’s the capital of Canada? For the record, it’s a place called Ottawa. Kamala Harris could probably tell you, but when it comes to Abraham Lincoln, she’s completely at sea. None of what she said was true.
Michael Burlingame would know, he runs the Lincoln Studies Department at the University of Illinois at Springfield, and he was baffled by what he saw at the VP debate. “I’ve never seen anything like that quote, and all my 36 years of Lincoln research,” Burlingame later said.
In fact, Lincoln didn’t immediately nominate a new Supreme Court Justice before the 1864 election because he couldn’t. The Senate was not in session at the time. And in 1864, there were fewer direct flights to Washington. Senators couldn’t just hop on a red-eye from California to come in and vote. Things moved more slowly.
In December, the day after the Senate reconvened, President Lincoln immediately nominated a replacement to the court.
So Kamala Harris’s version isn’t real, it didn’t happen. It was her version of the Corn Pop story. It was colorful, but entirely made up.
What’s not a fantasy is their plans, hard to believe, but this is real. They’re planning to completely change our American form of government. That is very close to happening, closer than a lot of Republicans want to admit and you should be worried about it.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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