Tuesday’s fight by Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats to block the Supreme Court nomination hearing of Brett Kavanaugh was urged by MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, who even suggested that liberals walk out if a delay doesn’t happen.
“I don’t understand why the Democrats are even showing up. They have been talking about this lack of transparency from the very beginning,” said the former Republican House member and critic of President Trump.
“You know, I would certainly recommend everybody around me not show up for the hearing because, as they said, you know, they think it’s like a banana republic, if they think they have been lied to, if they think the documents have been kept from them, they did a document dump on Labor Day, 42,000 documents. You don’t participate in a process that is that flawed. You review the documents and say, we’re going to review the documents and we will see you on Wednesday or Thursday,” he added.
The hearing was stalled at the beginning as Democrats sought to postpone it over the last minute document dump of papers related to Kavanaugh’s work for former President George W. Bush. The White has claimed executive privilege in hiding another 60,000 pages, but has turned over half a million.
On his show, another Republican, strategists Steve Schmidt, agreed with Scarborough.
“The seat, by definition, is illegitimate because [Obama pick] Merrick Garland was not afforded the confirmation hearings that he was entitled to have in a legitimate appointment by the president of the United States who was re-elected with the majority of the vote in 2012. And so when we look at this hearing, not to mention since he was nominated with the Michael Cohen indictment, essentially what we have is the president of the United States criminally is an unindicted co-conspirator here. And so the legitimacy of this seat is fundamentally in question,” said Schmidt.
Scarborough took Schmidt’s ball and ran, again urging Democratic obstruction of Kavanaugh.
He said:
“I say this as a former Republican, you a former Republican strategist, I don’t — I do not understand what these Democrats are thinking. I don’t understand their lack of fight, I don’t understand how they allow an illegitimate — this process is illegitimate. It started illegitimately. As you said, with Merrick Garland. And now Matt Miller, the Republicans have basically hidden 150,000 documents from Democrats that they have been begging for over the past several weeks. No judge in America would allow an opposing side to dump 150,000 documents on another party in a lawsuit the day before hearings started or a trial is started. I’m completely baffled. Why do Democrats — why are they even showing up? They should not show up. They should hold a press conference and they should publicly with cameras on them go through the 42,000 documents they just got yesterday and the 100,000-plus documents they get on the Friday before Labor Day weekend. Have the cameras come into the room. Have them review the documents. Let Americans see that they’re actually trying to figure out what facts are relevant before they appoint a guy to a lifetime appointment to the United States Supreme Court.”
