'Catastrophic': Supreme Court justice's alliance with Trump alarms political operative
A political operative sounded the alarm on a Supreme Court justice whom he believes is President Donald Trump's chief enabler.
During an episode of Court of History, journalist and former senior Clinton White House advisor Sidney Blumenthal explained the thinking behind a recent article he wrote for The Guardian about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
"When you look beneath the surface, and you see certain dissents and statements and opinions, you find that Kavanaugh is playing an instrumental key role on Trump's key issues," Blumenthal said. "And he's really the most politically attuned, the one who is acting most like a political operative, and the results are catastrophic."
Blumenthal said that Kavanaugh has aligned himself with Trump's agenda when it comes to immigration, birthright citizenship and "damaging" tariffs.
He pointed to Kavanaugh's concurrence that let immigration agents stop people based on factors including ethnic appearance, speaking Spanish, and working certain jobs, which Kavanaugh called "a relevant factor" and "common sense." The tactics later became known as "Kavanaugh stops," Blumenthal noted.
When Trump appealed a decision that blocked his tariffs, the Supreme Court sided with a lower court decision that called Trump's claims "unconstitutional," Blumenthal said. "Kavanaugh, however, said, Well, not only is it not unconstitutional, let me suggest certain laws and other kinds of citations of tariffs that you could cite" to get around laws stopping Trump's tariffs.
"He was playing the staffer to Trump," Blumenthal said. "And then Trump attacked the majority on the court as fools and dogs. But then he said, 'Kavanaugh, I'm so proud of him.'"
Blumenthal then pointed to Kavanaugh's "masterpiece of errors, factual revisionism and sophistry" on birthright citizenship, saying the justice built his case on speculation about what the framers of the 14th Amendment would have wanted.
"This is mind reading in a time machine about a non-existent legal category projected forward," Blumenthal said. "This is a fantastical fiction."