Appointments
Jake Sherman is no fan of Republicans in general or of President Trump in particular. He's the author of an unflattering book about the Trump White House, in which he also described Mitch McConnell's handling of the Kavanaugh confirmation as "merciless" and "Machiavellian."
During a CNN New Day discussion of the pending Senate impeachment trial on New Year's Eve, substitute host Poppy Harlow managed to work in a snide Merrick Garland shot at Mitch McConnell.
With 2019 drawing to a close, MSNBC took some time to reflect on the “greatest achievement of Mitch McConnell or President Trump,” namely the confirmation of scores of conservative federal judges. The liberal cable channel was certainly not celebrating the news, with anchors fearing how the appointments “will affect the laws of the land for years to come” and plotting ways for Democrats to “counter” the GOP success.
MSNBC Live co-hosts Stephanie Ruhle and Ali Velshi took a brief break from talking about impeachment Monday afternoon to agonize over another way in which President Trump and congressional Republicans are a threat to the republic: judicial appointments. Together with liberal legal eagle Danielle McLaughlin, they lamented Trump's high number of judicial appointments, the lack of a Democratic strategy in response, and the way Mitch McConnell handled the nomination of Merrick Garland.
Paranoia was striking deep on the set of AM Joy today. Host Joy Reid devoted a segment to a discussion of the supposedly serious possibility that President Trump would refuse to leave office after two terms, the constitutional limit of the 22nd Amendment notwithstanding.
Liberal Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus bashed the right as having trouble "accepting the facts,” on Morning Joe Tuesday. She was on MSNBC plugging her new anti-Kavanaugh book “Supreme Ambition,” which compares last year’s Supreme Court Justice confirmation hearings to the present day impeachment hearings. In it, Marcus argues that Republicans were unwilling to believe “the evidence” against Kavanaugh, just as they’re unwilling to believe the evidence for impeachment.
On Sunday's World News Tonight, at the end of a full report on liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's health scare from the weekend, ABC reporter Kyra Phillips misleadingly gave the impression that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had reacted to her health problems by ghoulishly speculating about replacing her when, in reality, she was referring to comments the Republican leader made six months ago.
During CNN’s 2019 Citizen Conference Thursday, CNN International journalist Christiane Amanpour practically bowed down to interviewee Anita Hill, calling her an “icon” who was unfairly persecuted after she accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing in 1991. The British journalist railed against sexism in American politics, even relating Hill to Hillary Clinton unfairly losing the 2016 election.
On the face of it, Michael Gerhardt is qualified to serve as a CNN legal analyst on constitutional questions. He is, after all, a Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at the UNC School of Law in Chapel Hill, and a Scholar in Residence at the National Constitution Center. But there was one part of Gerhardt's resume that CNN hid when New Day's John Berman brought him in to comment on President Trump's decision not to cooperate with the House impeachment inquiry. Gerhardt is also a long-time Democrat activist.
One of the revelations from the character assassination attempt of Justice Brett Kavanaugh by The New York Times was that Leland Keyser, an alleged witness to the allegations of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, was viciously pressured by Blasey Ford’s allies to back up the claims unless she wanted to be discredited with her past history of drug abuse. Well, one of the reporters behind the hit piece did the work for Team Blasey Ford in an appearance on CNN’s so-called “Reliable Sources” and slimed Keyser’s rebuttal.
In Thursday’s installment of The Hill’s “Rising,” chief Washington correspondent Saagar Enjeti lit up New York Times reporters Kate Kelly and Robin Pogrebin for their smear campaign against Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and grilled them on their obfuscation of exculpatory facts.
Self-described "conservative" Joe Scarborough frets that if President Trump and Mitch McConnell are successful, they will "shape the judiciary for the next 50 years." Scarborough expressed his concern in the context of criticizing Joe Kennedy for launching a Democrat primary campaign against incumbent Sen. Ed Markey in Massachusetts. Scarborough worries that money spent on that campaign will divert funds that could be used to defeat President Trump.