Judge Amy Coney Barret never opposed election-year Supreme Court appointments.
It did not happen. We have been over this already.
But leave it to CNN to promote this falsehood, all in service of aiding efforts to oppose the possible nomination of Barrett to the Supreme Court.
“An unearthed video that we have just found from 2016 shows professor Amy Coney Barrett at the time,” said CNN’s Erin Burnett Wednesday evening. “She warned of appointments to the Supreme Court that could flip the balance of power.”
The anchor continued, “President Obama was poised to choose a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia. So, that was the context. It was an election year. Here is what [Barrett] said.”
CNN then played a selectively edited clip of Barrett’s remarks from a 2016 CBS News interview, including when the judge said, “We’re talking about Justice Scalia, you know, the staunchest conservative on the court, and we’re talking about him being replaced by someone who can dramatically flip the balance of power in the court. It is not a lateral move.”
Burnett then tossed it over to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, teeing him up with a manufactured anti-Barrett “gotcha,” all wrapped nicely with a bow.
“So, senator, she’s … raising a flag, it seems, on making an appointment like this in an election year. So, you know, that is what would happen with her appointment. So, what do you say to that? Is this going to be important in the hearing?” asked the CNN anchor.
Schumer, for his part, said he is not “going to comment on any prospective nominee for judge before they are nominated.”
What a stupid and dishonest line of questioning from Burnett.
Barrett was not “raising a flag” about election-year Supreme Court nominations, as our own Philip Klein clarified already. Rather, the then-Notre Dame Law School professor was “merely explaining the historical precedents for election-year nominations and what was unique about the situation in 2016.”
He adds, “At no point did she say it would be inappropriate or wrong” to replace Scalia. “In fact, she explicitly explains twice that there is no clear precedent and that the issue could be argued both ways.”
Klein is right. If you watch the 2016 CBS News interview in its entirety, Barrett spent most of her appearance on the network discussing Scalia’s legacy. She also touched on court precedent and election-year vacancies, maintaining explicitly that the issue can be argued both ways.
“In sum, the president has the power to nominate, and the Senate has the power to act or not, and I don’t think either one of them can claim that there’s a rule governing one way or the other,” she said at the time.
During Burnett’s interview Wednesday with Schumer, the CNN host really went out of her way to misrepresent what Barrett said. It is telling that even a hardened partisan such as Schumer did not want to take the bait – at least not yet.
This stuff is not accidental. CNN is not sending its best.
