MSNBC handled the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court about as well as one would expect of the left-wing cable network.
On Monday, as Barrett and her family participated in a swearing-in event at the White House, MSNBC published an on-air headline that read, “Republicans celebrate conservative judges as thousands die.”
Did “thousands die” at that exact moment? Or is this more of a long-running thing?
Elsewhere on the network, host Chris Hayes echoed the garbled sentiments voiced by the on-air graphic, accusing Republicans and even Barrett herself of genocide.
“Something else that Mitch McConnell, and the institutional Republican Party, and all the staffers, and the lawyers, and the factotums, and the functionaries, and the people sitting in the White House watching this right now,” he said, “perhaps people on the Capitol Hill who have TV on right now, and the right-wing who have been supporting and spinning for this president, and the people who work for Donald Trump himself, and all of his apologists who like to pose as independent thinkers, too clever by half, removed from it all.”
Wow, that’s not even a sentence. But he continued, moving ponderously in the general direction of a point: “Something that every last one of them have done together, other than Supreme Court justices which cannot be reversed, and that is they have participated in a project that has led to the deaths of probably 100,000 Americans who didn’t have to die. Congratulations. You got that done, too. That also can’t be reversed. They can’t come back. We can’t undo that. That’s the other accomplishment here, Judge Barrett. They traded one for the other. They traded those lives for this justice.”
Hayes has been on this talking point for a few weeks now. How, exactly, the Senate killed hundreds of thousands of people by giving its advice and consent on this nomination is no clearer now than it was when Hayes first said it. As for Barrett, it’s hard to see how she is responsible for 100,000 dead. Perhaps Hayes’s argument is that by backing Trump in the first place in 2016, the GOP is complicit in the nation’s COVID-19 fatalities — because Hillary Clinton would have prevented the deaths? Or something? Maybe? But if that is his point, then why is he yelling at Barrett?
Then there is Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, who, for whatever reason, floated the idea Monday of installing 73-year-old failed presidential candidate Clinton on a Democratic-packed Supreme Court.
“What a great birthday gift it will be next year for [Clinton] when she is one of the three new Supreme Court justices appointed through the Judiciary Reform Act of 2021,” the cable host mused.
Elsewhere at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow opined that Democratic senators did not apply a religious litmus test to Barrett during her confirmation hearings.
“Barrett will be ruling on an important gay rights case [Fulton v. City of Philadelphia],” Maddow said. “One of the things that did not quite come up in her confirmation process is that she was on the board of a school that won’t let kids go there if their mom or dad is gay [and] won’t hire gay teachers. How do you think she’s going to rule on the gay rights case?”
Lastly, former “GOP consultant” and MSNBC contributor Steve Schmidt, who off camera is getting rich by raising money from liberals and putting up very expensive token opposition to the party he helped create, accused Barrett of diminishing both her personal integrity and the integrity of the Supreme Court by appearing at her own swearing-in ceremony.
“It took Justice Barrett seconds to disgrace herself after being sworn in,” said Schmidt. “She participated in a campaign rally at the White House and undermined the integrity, independence and trustworthiness of the U.S. Supreme Court. Her judgment is appalling.”
What is that supposed to mean?
Weirdly enough, this sentiment is shared by a few longtime “GOP consultants.”
“Barrett has now participated in two Trump campaign rallies,” said Stuart Stevens of Barrett’s appearance Monday at the White House. “This is terrible for Justice Barrett. She can and should stop Trump campaign from using her in this manner. Once an image is set, hard to undo. This hurts her credibility.”
At CNN, host Jake Tapper claimed an anonymous “GOP consultant” told him, “If I’m ACB, I don’t go to this. Looks bad, and she doesn’t need him anymore.”
Advising a Supreme Court justice to decline to attend her own swearing-in ceremony and then attacking her as a partisan when she does? Uh, wow, that’s some top-tier consulting. With razor-sharp advice such as this, it really is not that difficult to understand what happened to Republicans in 2008 and 2012.
At any rate, someone really should do a wellness check on the people at MSNBC. It is likely going to be rough going for them for quite some time.
