‘You stack the courts…and you will have a generation of a certain kind of jurisprudence…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) What do you get when you cross a blatantly biased talk-show host and a blatantly biased news anchor?
“Late Night with Seth Meyers” sought the punchline to this query by hosting CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Tuesday, where Cuomo offered his “expert” analysis as to why Republicans continue to support Trump.
“When people say to me, why do the Republicans embrace the president when he doesn’t seem to be traditionally Republican or conservative—why do they embrace him when they’re supposed to be character people, evangelicals… Judges. The answer is one word … You stack the courts across this country with white, male, young judges and you will have a generation of a certain kind of jurisprudence.”
Naturally, Republican minority appointees like Justice Clarence Thomas—whose confirmation hearing also produced a Democratic sideshow—didn’t fit the narrative and were conveniently forgotten.
Nor did President Barack Obama’s reciprocal attempts to stack the benches with judicial activists like Merrick Garland who would circumvent Congress to advance his legislative agenda.
Employing a common trope of such shows, Meyers played the madcap, framing his wacky intolerance as the norm and allowing straight-man Cuomo to masquerade as the voice of reason, albeit interspersing his own hot takes with calls for more bipartisan dialogue.
Responding to a question about why he continued to have White House officials and Republican newsmakers on his ‘news’ show, he called on viewers to ““Be open—who knows, maybe you’ll find some common ground on something. God forbid that our lawmakers are forced to act on something that’s good for the rest of us.”
From his ivory tower, the son of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and brother of current Gov. Andrew Cuomo then complained about the “silos” that members of Congress occupied during the first day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
The target, of course, was not the Leftist protestors who disrupted the proceedings for a full 80 minutes, nor the breaches in Senate protocol from partisans like Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), but rather Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley for attempting to call to order the hearing by pounding his gavel.
“You know, the Grassley thing was so funny, I almost popped one of the caps off my teeth,” he said.
In a moment of meta-irony, even Cuomo’s own dearth of self-awareness became a one-liner.
“Another thing that I constantly get told, including by my kids, is that I’m part of the problem. I get told that all the time, which, secretly, I have always believed.”
However, Cuomo did offer one nugget of wisdom for his audience about holding him and his network accountable:
“If I’m not doing my job, then don’t watch. You have great choices on at the same time as me, and if I’m not getting it done, that’s the price of performance.”