The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Names Brett Kavanaugh For Supreme Court

Episode Date: July 10, 2018

President Trump announced his choice to nominate Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. If confirmed, Kavanaugh would solidify the court's conservative majority. This episode: political reporter Asma Khalid, Congressional reporter Kelsey Snell and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Claire George-Drumheller. You're listening to the NPR Politics Podcast, which was recorded at 9.51 p.m. on Monday, July 9th. Keep in mind, things may have changed by the time you hear this. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It is my honor and privilege to announce that I will nominate Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. We're here to give you the bio you need. Who is Brett Kavanaugh and why did President Trump select him for the Supreme Court? I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And I'm Kelsey Snell and I cover Congress. All right. well, there was a lot of buildup

to the announcement tonight. It felt kind of like watching a reality TV show. The president didn't even come on stage with him. He announced him afterwards. Exactly, and he came out and made this primetime announcement Monday night where he finally did introduce his nominee for the Supreme Court.

The rule of law is our nation's proud heritage. It is the cornerstone of our freedom. It is what guarantees equal justice. And the Senate now has the chance to protect this glorious heritage by sending Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. So Mara, let's begin with a very basic question. Who is Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. So Mara, let's begin with a very basic question. Who is Brett Kavanaugh? Brett Kavanaugh is an appeals court judge who has had a very, very long career in Washington. He is an establishment pick. He has worked for the George W. Bush White House. He worked in the 2000 Florida recount. He had worked for Ken Starr in the investigation into Bill Clinton. So he has a very long paper trail. He is very well known in

conservative circles. And he was reportedly the favorite of Don McGahn, who is the White House counsel. So after President Trump introduced him, Judge Kavanaugh and his family came up onto the stage and the judge took the mic to introduce himself to the public and tell a little bit of his own storyline. My mom was a trailblazer. When I was 10, she went to law school and became a prosecutor. My introduction to law came at our dinner table when she practiced her closing arguments. Her trademark line was, use your common sense. What rings true? What rings false? That's good advice for a juror and for a son. And he spoke about his mom quite a bit actually there at the beginning. He talked about how she taught African-American students in the 60s and 70s,

and then made a point of actually sort of focusing on the fact that he hires these diverse law clerics. He also pointed to the fact that Elena Kagan, who's known as a liberal, fairly liberal justice on the Supreme Court, hired him to teach at Harvard University. And I was very intrigued, I will say, by all this messaging specifically as it related to women and to various racial minorities. What did you think, Kelsey? I thought that it was a very smart and strategic way to introduce himself to a bunch of senators who are going to have to be approving his nomination in the next couple of months. Particularly because it takes the wind out of the sails of some of these early press releases we saw that were trying to characterize him as being kind of ruthless seeming or it makes it so that he gets to control his own narrative of what kind of person he is.

What's so interesting to me about that statement is I got in my inbox, of course, our inboxes have just been flooded tonight with pro and con reactions to this. But one of them was a study done by three political scientists about where Judge Kavanaugh, if he became a Supreme Court justice, where he would fall on the ideological spectrum. And they placed him, based on his previous rulings and statements, as the second most, potentially, the second most conservative justice right after Clarence Thomas. So more conservative than Alito, Gorsuch, Roberts, second most conservative justice. And what's really interesting to me is that he felt in this statement that he didn't have to go out there and communicate to the anti-abortion community that he is a reliable vote. He didn't have to use a lot of conservative

signaling. What he did is he checked a lot of boxes, Elena Kagan, minority students, women. Why did he have to do that? He has the votes he needs among Republicans. Why does he have to make himself seem more accepting of diversity, supportive of women. Why? Because his views are representative of a minority in this country. They happen to be a majority of the people who hold power right now, but they are a minority. Are you speaking sort of about the conservative opinion? Yes, yes, yes. So that to me is so interesting. In other words, it's not a kind of triumphal, confident conservatism that feels that it has convinced a majority of Americans. It's still a minority view, even though they have the majority of all the power centers. also an attempt to ensure that people like Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, the two senators who, if anybody, is going to be on the bubble from the Republican Party in the upcoming nominations, is making sure that they feel secure stepping out and saying that they

can support him. And essentially, we saw in the statement from Collins that she doesn't exactly say that she's going to vote for him, but she offers a much more supportive statement than what I was expecting right off the bat. She says, Judge Kavanaugh has impressive credentials and extensive experience, having served more than a decade on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. I'll conduct a careful, thorough vetting of the president's nominee to the Supreme Court, as I have done with the five previous Supreme Court justices whom I have considered. I look forward to Judge Kavanaugh's public hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee and to questioning him in a meeting in my office. Now, that is fairly hedgy. She's not saying she's going to support him, and she's not saying she's not going to. But saying that he has

impressive credentials and an extensive experience signals that she was impressed by something that she heard today. Well, also, don't forget she laid down this bar. She said she won't vote for someone who demonstrates hostility to Roe. He's not going to ever demonstrate hostility to Roe. As a matter of fact, he's going to try to avoid saying anything about Roe at all. So of all the kabuki theater aspects to a Supreme Court confirmation fight, one of the biggest charades is for moderate, supposedly cent-life justices on the court and it would go back to the states. There can't be any overt comments that Roe will be overturned. That's part of the charade, that that is something that's unknown. Well, let's talk about Roe versus Wade, because I would say most of the emails that I've been getting from people this evening have been extremely

polarizing, but on that very issue, Mara, right? Like the battle lines have been drawn, and we are hearing from liberals who are saying that this is, you know, evidence that Roe versus Wade will be overturned. But on the sort of flip side, I guess I'm curious to understand these battle lines have been drawn around this particular issue. But do we have a sense of where things are going to fall? Because this is sort of the biggest question mark. But to your point, it's not as if he's going to come out and openly talk about chipping away at something that has now been precedent for decades. But I don't think there is a question mark. In other words, if conservatives weren't completely and utterly confident that he was that he wanted justices who are pro-life and that the result would be that this decision about abortion would be returned to the states. In other words, Roe would be overturned. So I don't

think it's much of a question. I just think the question is, how forthcoming would he be about his views on Roe? And I would think the answer to that would be not at all. Kelsey, have we seen any responses yet thus far for Democratic senators, specifically tonight, hitting at this particular issue on Roe versus Wade? Oh, absolutely. A large number of them have specifically pointed to the issue of abortion as a reason why they would oppose this nominee. And that's really interesting to me, because we didn't see as many of them coming out and immediately saying they were no when Gorsuch was nominated. There were some people, but a lot

of Democrats are saying already that they will not vote for him. That is a part of a larger change in the way they're having a conversation about this nomination. I think you saw a lot through the Gorsuch process. They talked about fairness, And it seemed like they weren't really jumping on the exact policy issues that they thought were at stake. There are no mistakes to be made here about what Democrats want to talk about. And they want to talk about the future of the Affordable Care Act. And they want to talk about what this will do for abortion rights. They want to do that because even if the, and it seems very likely that he will be approved, if Kavanaugh is approved, they need to be able to turn to their voters and say,

this is what happens when you don't show up to the polls and you don't show up and vote for Democrats. They need this to be a motivating factor, not just in 2018, but in 2020. I totally agree with Kelsey. This is a really important point. The way that you get to have some kind of control over who gets on the Supreme Court is to put more senators of your own party in the Senate. And if you don't care about the Supreme Court, you're not going to succeed in that. And one of the things that we've seen over the years is that Republican voters have been voters that care about the Supreme Court.

And, Mara, to your point, we've been already seeing that. In fact, we even have an ad I just want to play a bit of, which is the Missouri attorney general. He's a Republican who's challenging Claire McCaskill in Missouri. And he's already been up on TV with basically this very issue of how she would be too liberal for Missourians. Josh Hawley. The eyes of the nation are on Missouri. We decide which values control the Senate and the Supreme Court. Claire McCaskill wants liberals in charge.

That's how she votes. That's not Missouri's way, and it won't be my way. I got my start at the Supreme Court, defending religious liberty. I even met my wife there. She's a tough lawyer, too. I'm Josh Hawley. I know our way of life is at risk. That's why I approved this message.

There we have it. A Republican candidate in Missouri really, you know, essentially campaigning explicitly there on the message of the Supreme Court. And very apocalyptic. Our way of life is at risk. And that is how conservatives have seen the court. For years and years, they chafed under this liberal court. Anger and fear is the biggest motivator for voters. And because Roe was the law of the land, they were motivated to come out and elect senators that would, over time, set up the circumstances to overturn it.

Democrats, if they want to in the future have control over who goes on the Supreme Court, they have to elect more Democratic senators. And to me, what I'm watching for is to see if Democratic voters become what I call 360 degree voters, that they care about the court, that they turn out every two years instead of every four years the way Republican voters do. Up until now, they haven't done that. I'm not sure that I've heard lots of messaging thus far. I will say I travel around quite a bit talking to different voters. I get that they are angry this cycle, but I have not heard explicit messaging thus far about the Supreme Court, though that could certainly change quickly. It will change as I've talked to the strategists

for Democrats who say this is going to be the message. As much as Josh Hawley's message works for motivating Republicans, Democrats are going to see that video and have the exact opposite reaction. Democrats I've talked to believe that this will be as animating for their voters as it is for Republicans. One of the sort of concerns that I had heard about him initially was that, yes, he is a conservative. He's a through and through conservative. He is an establishment Republican. But for some conservatives that he was not conservative enough. What does that mean, Mara? And is that a legitimate criticism?

One thing about Donald Trump for all of norm-busting aspects of his presidency, his derision of NATO, his putting tariffs on our allies, when it comes to picking judges, cutting taxes or deregulating rules, he is a typical establishment conservative Republican. He is acting the way any Republican president would do in those areas. And yeah, I don't think that his problem is going to be conservative backlash at all. I mean, this is a widely acceptable nominee. One statement that I just got in that I think is really interesting and important is from Senator Heidi Heitkamp. She's one of those three Democrats who is representing a state that President Trump won in 2016. Her statement is really interesting because she says, an exhaustive and fair process took place for Justice Gorsuch, who I supported, and it should and must take place again now. Now, she is bringing up her own support of Gorsuch in this, and I think that that is kind of telling

about where her mindset is. Yeah, and don't forget that an exhaustive process on Kavanaugh could take a really long time. One of the reasons why Mitch McConnell and Kelsey can talk about this was telling Donald Trump, hmm, some of the I like all of the people you're looking at, but some of them are going to be easier to get through just because they have a shorter paper trail. Brett Kavanaugh has a humongous paper trail. He's been on the court for 12 years. He had thousands of emails when he was in the Bush White House. So there's a lot to go through. So Kelsey, is he easier or harder? It sounds like he has a long record to get through. But in terms of his likability or just overall, his ability to get through based on his own credentials, what do you think?

It seems like it will be a exhaustive and difficult process, I think, to get through the nomination. It's hard to know just now exactly how people are going to vote. I would say, though, that even with Kagan, in the last two justices, it took roughly 66 days to get through each of their nominations from the date of nomination to the date of confirmation. And that may seem like a long time, but that's just over two months. And Kagan had a big background that they had to sort through. I know the goal for McConnell is to be in that same timeframe. So two months, roughly two months is what they would like to do to get this done.

Judge Kavanaugh will start interviews on the Hill tomorrow, right? He'll start meeting with people, members of Congress. Is there something that you think he needs to do at this point to convince some of these people, like some of the Democratic senators or some of the Republican senators, you mentioned Lisa Murkowski, who might have a little bit of hesitation? I think it's all going to come down to the way he answers or doesn't answer their direct questions about policy issues. If he's able to artfully say, I have this kind of judicial theory, and this is the way that I think about civil rights, or I think about the Constitution in general, without just saying, no, I won't answer your question about how I will vote on Roe,

that I mean, it depends on how artful he is in this process. I mean, at this point, we kind of know, as we've talked about a lot, we know kind of what he stands for. You know, the other thing to mention, and Kelsey has talked about a lot, we know kind of what he stands for. You know, the other thing to mention, and Kelsey has talked about this before, but clearly two Republican senators to watch, the two pro-abortion rights women, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. But I think even more important, the most excruciating dilemma is the five red state Senate incumbents who are up this year, and in particular, the three who voted for Neil Gorsuch, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Joe Donnelly of

Indiana. And what they have to think about is, number one, you know, the way that Democrats will eventually have some control over the court is to have more Democrats elected to the Senate. So what makes more sense? Do they vote for Kavanaugh? They think maybe it would help them be elected to the Senate. It doesn't mean that Donald Trump isn't going to be coming to their states and bashing them, even if they do vote for him. Or do they stick with the Democratic base and vote no? They're possibly jeopardizing their chances at reelection. That is just a really, really tough decision for these Democrats. All right. Well, Judge Kavanaugh will head to the Hill tomorrow.

And if there's news, Kelsey will sure to let us know. And we will update you in the pod feed. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.