Ketanji Brown Jackson: “Let’s Put Her under the Toughest Scrutiny Possible”

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Published: March 14, 2022 | Date of Source Audio: March 2, 2022

Transcribed and modified for publication from the original audio program

Dinesh D’Souza’s verdict on Biden’s Supreme Court nomination

Dinesh D’Souza: Biden has nominated a judge from the D.C. circuit, her name is Ketanji Brown Jackson, as the replacement for Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court. And there is not a whole lot to be said about Judge Jackson, because she's not a very distinguished judge. In fact, she's not on the second highest court in the land. She has not written a lot of opinions. In fact, very few. And she has been on a couple of significant cases swatted down by higher courts that basically said you are exceeding the authority of a judge.

I'll get into some of those cases as we get a little bit closer, talking a little more detail about her record. But here I want to talk about kind of the broader point, which is you've got all kinds of people on the democratic side, notably James Clyburn of South Carolina, saying, You know what? Lay off her, let's not have another intemperate judicial nomination process. And then he says this line, which I want to focus on: This is above politics.

Now, why is it above politics? Is it above politics because judicial nominations in general are above politics? That would be news to me going all the way back at least to the Bork nomination. Judicial nominations have been all about politics. So maybe that's not what he means. I think what he means is that we have a kind of totemic nomination. We have a “first black woman” card here. And so Republicans need to sort of pay a certain deference because, you know, we've got a twofer. We’ve got someone who's not only a person of color, but also a woman. So, there's a kind of double immunity here from what the Supreme Court itself calls strict scrutiny.

“ I think that this call for treating Judge Jackson, you may say, with kid gloves is nonsense.”

Now, I think that this call for treating Judge Jackson, you may say, with kid gloves is nonsense, and the Republicans should not fall for it. Why? Because first of all, Clarence Thomas is black. Was he treated kindly by the Democrats? No. They went after him with a kind of comprehensive ruthlessness that had to be seen to be believed. They tried to destroy the man's credibility and destroy the man's life. They tried to humiliate him. I mean, I remember Thomas himself called it a high-tech lynching. That's how he described it. So that's the treatment that the Democrats gave to that black man. And Republicans need to realize that this kind of racial immunity, if we don't get it on our side, we don't need to give it to them on their side, either.

Number two, what about the woman card? Well, what about Amy Coney Barrett? She's a woman. The Democrats sort of say, listen, you know, we're not going to be too hard on her because she's a woman, this is a very special occasion.

No, their idea was let's go after her. Let's try to discredit her. Let's try to make her a religious fanatic. Let's try to demand that she recuse herself on cases related to election fraud. Let's use every card we can to try to defeat this nomination. Of course, we all remember what they did to Kavanaugh.

So, I think Republicans are going to be in for this kind of treatment unceasingly until they realize that they're going have to mete out some of that same treatment to the other side.

And so, what I would recommend: let's unleash some private investigators, let's find out everything we can about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, let's find any skeletons that we can in her closet. Let's highlight them, expose them, bring them up. Let's put her under the toughest scrutiny possible. Now, this is a case where the Democrats need 51 votes. First of all, they've had a little trouble getting 51 on their own side. But I think that they might. In this case, they probably will.

But they're hoping to get Republican votes. They're hoping to get a bunch of them. They'd love to get Romney and Susan Collins and Murkowski and six or seven others. So they can say, well, this was a bipartisan approval. Let's remember Amy Coney Barrett got through on pretty much a straight party-line vote. The Democrats don't want that. They want to create a kind of air of bipartisan legitimacy and Republicans may not have the power to stop this nomination, but they do have the power to deny the Democrats that.