Mitch McConnell Bashes Supreme Court Pick

Mitch McConnell confirmed he will not be backing Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court because she is the ‘court-packers pick, and she testified like it.’ 

McConnell (R-Ky.) criticized Jackson’s ‘evasive and unclear’ answers during her confirmation hearing, and accused her of secretly supporting calls to add more justices to the Supreme Court.

‘She’s declined to address critically important questions and ameliorate real concerns. First and foremost is the simple question of court-packing,’ McConnell said Wednesday per C-SPAN.

‘The far-left fringe groups that promoted Judge Jackson for this vacancy want Democrats to destroy the court’s legitimacy through partisan court-packing,’ he said on the Senate floor.’ 

‘She was literally the court packers pick for the seat, and she has repeatedly refused to reject their position.’  

Judge Jackson still stands to be nominated despite McConnell’s objections. 

McConnell had previously praised Jackson, who is the first black woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court in the court’s history, calling her a ‘sharp lawyer with an impressive résumé.’

However, he took a far more critical turn on Wednesday,   

‘Judge Jackson has refused to follow in the footsteps of Ginsburg and Breyer. She refuses to rule out what the radical activists want,’ he said. 

McConnell noted that late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and retiring liberal Justice Stephen Breyer and ‘slammed the door’ the idea of creating more justices to the nine-member court, before adding that Jackson has ‘made sure to quietly signal openness’ to the idea. 

McConnell also criticized Jackson’s ‘remarkable lack of candor,’ and her lack of fully fleshed-out legal philosophies, while pointing out self-admitted lack of experience.

‘The nominee tried to punt by simply restating the most basic elements of a judge’s job description,’ he said.  

‘Judge Jackson tried to dodge questions about constitutional interpretation by claiming that she does not have enough experience,’ he added. 

‘She told Sen. [John] Kennedy [R-La.] she does have an opinion on court-packing, but it’s not a strongly held opinion. In any event, she wouldn’t tell the senator what it was.’

Judge Jackson still stands to be nominated despite McConnell’s objections.  

With a simple majority needed for confirmation and the Senate currently divided 50-50 between the parties, Jackson would get nominated if Democrats remained united, regardless of how the Republicans vote.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on Judge Jackson’s nomination on April 4. 

Jackson’s confirmation hearings were not without controversy, however, as she issued a passionate defense Tuesday of her history of sentencing child porn offenders, claiming her punishment could be viewed as ‘soft’ because guidelines are outdated in not accounting for the more widespread sharing with the internet. 

And Fox News host Tucker Carlson slammed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for repeatedly declining to give a definitive answer on how she defines a ‘woman’ in Senate hearings for her Supreme Court confirmation.

On Tuesday, Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, pressed Jackson on whether she can define the word ‘woman’, to which Jackson declined and said ‘I’m not a biologist.’

In his broadcast on Wednesday night, Carlson played the clip, saying that ‘for a world-famous scholar like Ketanji Jackson’ the question ‘should have been effortless.’ 

Jackson also touched on the controversial subject of critical race theory, saying she has not studied the issue but does not believe it is taught in schools, during a rapid-fire round of questioning from Sen. Ted Cruz.

Cruz, R-Texas, pointed out that books like ‘Antiracist Baby’ are taught in the school where the judge sits on the board and even brought out a set of props to hound the Supreme Court nominee on the hot-button culture war matter.

Asked by Cruz to define the concept, Jackson underscored that critical race theory (CRT) was an ‘academic theory’ that she had never used in the courtroom. 

Jackson ended up breaking down in tears during the evening session of the third day of hearings of her Supreme Court nomination on Wednesday after Democratic New Jersey Senator Cory Booker gushed over her appointment.

Jackson had been sitting silently listening to Booker when suddenly the pressure of the moment appeared break through. It was the first time in three solid days of questioning from senators that she had showed such raw emotion.

Jackson reached for a tissue and wiped away tears that had begun to stream down her cheeks.