Sean walks back all of the promises Joe Biden has made around the Supreme Court vacancies... is there anything more swampy than pre-election promises? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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| I'm Carol Markowitz. | |
| And I'm Mary Catherine Hamm. | |
| We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently. | |
| Normally is about real conversations. | |
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| Sean is a number. | |
| You want to be a part of this extravaganza. | |
| There's a lot of, you know, a lot of chatter about how this whole court thing went down as it relates to Breyer and his announcement and why he didn't get to announce it himself and what's the real agenda and what's going on behind the scenes and whether or not Joe Biden's promise. | |
| Now, he made this promise in a debate when he was with Bernie Sanders that he would appoint an African-American woman to be on the Supreme Court, the first African-American woman, which, by the way, I'm sure there are many, many highly qualified people that would fit the bill. | |
| That's not the issue in this particular case. | |
| The issue is whether or not it's constitutional. | |
| It was interesting because it's the Democrat, Jonathan Turley, that is suggesting that this is unconstitutional. | |
| He's a George Washington University law professor, and he noted yesterday that Biden's criteria for a new Supreme Court justice is that she be African-American and female. | |
| He says that criteria is unconstitutional. | |
| And he reminded us in a piece that he wrote that in his debate with Bernie Sanders, Joe made two pledges to voters and asked his opponent to do the same and to nominate only an African-American woman for the next open Supreme Court seat and to choose a woman as his vice president. | |
| Okay, we all know the Democratic Party is playing identity politics all the time, but the pledge to impose a gender race requirement for the next Supreme Court nominee is troubling legally because what Biden was declaring and what Sanders himself actually avoided, which I didn't figure out until I read Turley's column, would effectively constitute discrimination in admission to the U.S. Supreme Court. | |
| And the Supreme Court has declared that such race or gender conditions are strictly unconstitutional for admission to public colleges. | |
| So the pledges that Biden has made amount to this. | |
| And he wrote it this way, wrote, no matter how qualified men or in the case of the Supreme Court, women who are not African American may be, he will not consider them as candidates. | |
| In the case of vice president, such gender discrimination would be allowed, as presidential candidates can select a running mate on any grounds and voters can decide if they approve. | |
| Justices, however, are lifetime appointees, and presidents have always been careful to state that while they seek diversity among their nominees, they would appoint the single most qualified person regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation. | |
| But in a single declaration, Biden quickly dispensed with even the pretense of any equal consideration. | |
| And he writes, imposing an absolute requirement that a nominee be of a particular gender and race is effectively an affirmative action pledge, and it's precisely what the Supreme Court has already declared to be unconstitutional. | |
| And then Turley even reiterated this on Twitter and the National Review pointing out that Joe Pollock had a great piece on this today, that Biden, which he quoted all of this, that Biden eliminated a generation of progressive jurists with different racial and gender labels. | |
| Biden has unwisely now limited his options by preemptively declaring the 2020 campaign and his first Supreme Court nominee would be an African-American woman. | |
| In a stroke, he disqualified dozens of liberal progressive jurists for no other reason than their race and their gender. | |
| It's not a great start in selecting someone sworn to provide equal justice under the law. | |
| Though unconstitutional, it's not clear that this criteria has identified that Biden identified selecting a Supreme Court justice would be subject to legal review by the court under the political question doctrine. | |
| But it's pretty interesting as you look at it. | |
| Now, does politics play a part in this election? | |
| Yeah, of course it does. | |
| I mean, that's pretty much for everybody in every position in government. | |
| Interestingly, now the White House is being pressed a little bit by this. | |
| Chief propagandist circle back Jensaki affirming that Biden's promise to nominate a black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, replacing Justice Breyer. | |
| The president has stated and reiterated his comment to nominating a black woman to the Supreme Court, and certainly he stands by that and said he stands by the remarks. | |
| All right. | |
| And apparently there's another article, FoxNews.com had it out, that Biden also promised Congressman Clyburn that he would nominate an African-American woman to the Supreme Court. | |
| Remember, when he got to South Carolina, that was right after Iowa, right after New Hampshire, he needed a win badly in South Carolina. | |
| He had performed poorly in Iowa, poorly in New Hampshire. | |
| And if he hoped to have any shot at the Democratic nomination, it was really James Clyburn that rescued Joe Biden. | |
| Because if James Clyburn had gone with somebody else, it probably would have been over for Joe Biden's chances. | |
| Usually when you get to South Carolina, South Carolina is usually the line in the sand, the demarcation line, when the gloves come off, no matter how civil a campaign is going, it usually turns south very quickly. | |
| Exhibit A might be, say, John McCain and George W. Bush. | |
| George W. Bush went hardcore after John McCain in the state of South Carolina because he needed that win. | |
| So it appears that Biden made the promise to Congressman Jim Clyburn to secure Clyburn's endorsement during the 2020 South Carolina primary, which, by the way, is all the things that we're not supposed to like about politics, right? | |
| Is there anything more swampy? | |
| You know, there's the swamp of D.C. | |
| Well, you really need my endorsement. | |
| I'm going to want a few things from you if, in fact, I get it. | |
| And that's how it happened. | |
| Anyway, the squad has weighed in, you know, AOC and company, and they've quickly responded after Breyer's retirement. | |
| Breyer, apparently, according to all reports, was furious. | |
| He didn't get to make his own announcement. | |
| But anyway, Corey Bush, a Democratic congresswoman, it's past time for a black woman to be named to the Supreme Court. | |
| She tweeted that yesterday. | |
| And anyway, Corey Bush then later specified identity is important, but it's not enough. | |
| I'd love to see a black woman who will insist on racial, environmental, social disability, and economic justice named to the Supreme Court. | |
| Now, Democrats, they've always believed things that they could never get done at the ballot box legislatively that they want the courts to enact. | |
| In other words, what is judicial activism? | |
| Well, that would bypass this notion, this concept, as simple as it is, that each branch of government is equal, co-equal branches of government. | |
| You have the judiciary branch, you have the executive branch, and of course, you've got Congress. | |
| And those three branches of government, you know, co-equal branches, you know, have very specific roles set forth in the Constitution. | |
| It's not the role of a member of the court to write laws. | |
| That's the job of the role of the legislative branch. | |
| That's their job. | |
| But they prefer, if they can't get it done legislatively, that it get done from the bench. | |
| If the bench is stacked, and Democrats have talked extensively about packing the courts or about term-limiting court people that serve on the courts, et cetera. | |
| You know, all of this is part of the power grab, like D.C. statehood, eliminating the filibuster, packing the courts. | |
| And this is all designed, you know, like this election bill that wouldn't have voter ID, people that are pushing to have illegal immigrants vote in elections. | |
| All of this is designed not for integrity measures, not so we have confidence in results, but for Democrats to give them a greater chance. | |
| They have nefarious intentions to put the law aside, history aside, everything else aside for the purpose of benefiting their strength and their power. | |
| It's really that simple. | |
| Anyway, so one person's name I noticed, Sherilyn Eiffel. | |
| Her name has come up quite a bit, is apparently a lawyer who backed the defund the police movement. | |
| I'm sure there's a deep dive background going on even now as we speak into any possible candidates. | |
| One big question everybody's asking, you know, would Biden, could Kamala Harris cast the tiebreaking vote for herself? | |
| Because, and we'll play this later, Jensaki actually would not answer the question. | |
| She was asked outright to deny whether or not Kamala Harris is being considered as a potential Supreme Court justice. | |
| She didn't give a yes or a no. | |
| Again, I'll play the tape later. | |
| But why not give a definitive no? | |
| Now, there have been all these reports about this undercurrent of dislike between the two of them. | |
| It seemed palpable on numerous occasions. | |
| One occasion at somebody's funeral, they didn't even acknowledge each other. | |
| I know they went on one trip together, or maybe two. | |
| It's not like they're spending a lot of time together either. | |
| Kamala Harris's office has been leaking that a lot of their problems is because of Joe Biden. | |
| Joe Biden's blaming Kamala Harris. | |
| They're all leaking against each other, which is always good for Republicans. | |
| So let them keep at it. | |
| But it is an interesting question. | |
| So the speculation would be rampant that Biden would nominate Kamala Harris to become the first black female Supreme Court justice after making history as the first female vice president. | |
| The analysis that I have read that's most interesting to me is that it could actually happen. | |
| Now, there are others saying that, well, she may not be able to cast a tiebreaking vote, but time will tell. | |
| Anyway, for this to happen, that would mean that Biden would have to nominate her and she'd have to accept the nomination. | |
| And that would be a dignified exit from the 2024 Democratic ticket. | |
| Most Democrats don't want Joe Biden to run. | |
| Most Democrats don't want Kamala Harris to run. | |
| Now, this is becoming a big problem. | |
| Then you got to ask yourself: all right, then who's going to run? | |
| Amy Klobuchar? | |
| Let's see. | |
| Elizabeth Warren, Pete Budajudge. | |
| I mean, I don't see a very deep bench of qualified candidates to run against what maybe Donald Trump, if he runs, or if not Trump, I guess the frontrunner would be Ron DeSantis, but I think Trump's probably likely to run. | |
| Schumer and Durbin vow to quickly confirm the nominee. | |
| There's no shock in any of that. | |
| But it's just, it just is interesting. | |
| Anyways, I feel bad in a way for Breyer because his retirement sent shockwaves through the political world. | |
| And more than Breyer had hoped, many people reported that he planned to announce his retirement hours after that happened. | |
| Shannon Bremen Fox, as we reported yesterday, he wasn't planning on making that announcement yesterday. | |
| And anyway, he apparently was very upset at the way it was being handled and the timeline that was used that was not approved by him. | |
| And who could blame him for that? | |
| Be like, let's say Linda decided to leave the show and we just decided today. | |
| Come on here. | |
| Linda's leaving the show. | |
| You're not leaving the show, are you? | |
| I don't know. | |
| Should we hit the breaking new sounder now? | |
| I don't know. | |
| You're not allowed to leave. | |
| Breaking news. | |
| Oh, man. | |
| You're stuck with me forever. | |
| Lucky you. | |
| Here come all the Linda lovers. | |
| Oh, Hannity, you think that's a good idea. | |
| Oh, trust me. | |
| Just like people hate you, they hate me. | |
| There's just as many. | |
| Get in line. | |
| First of all, now that's they're not like they hate me more than you. | |
| Trust me. | |
| A little bit more, but not by much. | |
| All right, 25 now to the top of the hour. | |
| Did you see this article by Piers Morgan in today's New York Post, Linda, about trans female athletes are making a mockery of fair play? | |
| Be a woman, be a swimmer, just stay in your own lane. | |
| And it's a very provocative piece. | |
| And he writes, What would happen if Floyd Mayweather? | |
| And then he talks about Tiger Woods, you know, announced he was transitioning to be a woman in the case of Floyd Mayweather and wanted to compete in women's boxing or Tiger Woods in golf. | |
| And he lays out other examples. | |
| And then all of them can lay claim to be the all-time greatest, you know, athletes of their sport. | |
| And all of them were unbeatable in their prime by other men. | |
| And at the risk of winning myself the award for the bleeding obvious, I would annihilate every woman that they competed against who was born a female born with a female biological body. | |
| And they'll win every time. | |
| And smash the smithereens, he writes, all existing, I'm sorry, all existing women's records and in the process, irrevocably destroy women's sports altogether. | |
| But that would never happen. | |
| I hear you cry. | |
| To which I say, you're probably right. | |
| So far as I know, Mayweather, Woods, et cetera, have no desire to transition into being a woman. | |
| But of course, they would if they wanted to, just as a former U.S. Gold Olympic men's decathlon gold medal winner Caitlin Jenner did. | |
| And I know Caitlin well. | |
| I've known Caitlin. | |
| I knew Caitlin when Caitlin was Bruce Jenner. | |
| We've had a friendly relationship over the years. | |
| As a matter of fact, Caitlin's book for TV tonight. | |
| Then he says, let me be clear, I'm not transphobic. | |
| I want nothing but tolerance, fairness, equality for all transgender people. | |
| Nobody would go through such lengthy physical, emotional turmoil if they didn't genuinely feel that they were trapped in the wrong body and sexuality. | |
| So members of the trans community have my full support in their struggle both to be accepted and have equal rights as the rest of us. | |
| But, and it's a massive but, but that shouldn't entitle those born with male biological bodies to create a new unfairness and inequality by competing in sports against women born female. | |
| Yet this is exactly what is now happening, most notably in women's swimming, where there's a trans athlete. | |
| I'd never heard of her, Leah Thomas. | |
| Have you heard of her? | |
| Yeah, I've heard of her. | |
| Okay, is currently demolishing rivals and making an absolute mockery of sporting fairness. | |
| Thomas 22 was a mediocre performer when she competed as a man, but is now a record-breaking phenomenon competing as a woman, winning some races by entire whole lengths of a pool. | |
| I'm not the biggest swimming sports enthusiast in the world. | |
| I'm going to be honest here. | |
| But, you know, I've watched Michael Phelps, for example. | |
| I know people that swim. | |
| You have to be so dedicated to that sport to be an Olympic athlete. | |
| The amount of time you spend in the pool, hours every day, lap after lap after lap. | |
| Can you think of anything more dull than doing that? | |
| I mean, listen, I only learned to swim about a year and a half ago, so I wouldn't say that I would say. | |
| Wait a minute, that can't be true. | |
| You only swim a year. | |
| You didn't know how to swim before that? | |
| So, yeah, I learned how to swim because my son was learning how to swim, and God forbid anything ever happened to him when he was swimming. | |
| I need to win. | |
| You really did. | |
| If I threw you in a pool years ago, you would have drowned? | |
| Yes. | |
| Did you have a fear of swimming pools or a fear of water? | |
| I have an immense fear of water. | |
| Immense. | |
| I still do. | |
| You really do? | |
| My hands are going to be awful. | |
| I'm afraid of heights and water. | |
| I don't love heights particularly after I fell three stories off a roof once. | |
| That wasn't particularly. | |
| I don't think it's heights you were afraid of. | |
| It was falling off the roof you weren't a fan of. | |
| There was a big difference. | |
| Well, heights was a wonderful thing. | |
| Oh, I don't like this feeling. | |
| I get really woozy. | |
| Like, I used to sing at Windows of the World back in the day, and it was on 107, and I would get really, really sick when we got up there, and I'd be like, oh, I can't look out the window. | |
| Windows of the World. | |
| I was at the World Trade Center, right? | |
| Yeah, the World Trade Center. | |
| Back in the day. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So Michael Phelps. | |
| Now, it's interesting because when I interviewed Caitlin when she was running for governor, I made the announcement, I did ask about this issue. | |
| She does not believe trans athletes should compete like this. | |
| And took a lot of heat, apparently, from the trans community. | |
| Did you know that? | |
| I mean, a lot of. | |
| She's getting a lot of heat from a lot of different directions right now. | |
| That's a good point. | |
| Anyway, so anyway, Michael Phelps, the greatest swimmer of all time, was asked about it on Fake News CNN, and his first words were very telling. | |
| He says, I can't talk from a standpoint of, I can talk from a standpoint of doping. | |
| What kind of answer is that? | |
| I don't think I've competed in a clean field in my entire career. | |
| So I think this leads back to the organizing committees. | |
| And there has to be a level playing field. | |
| And there's something we all need because, you know, that's what sports are. | |
| Like, for example, I might surprise some people. | |
| I forget, I think it was Andy Pettit. | |
| He pitched for the Yankees. | |
| Great pitcher. | |
| And he admitted when he didn't, unlike a lot of the other ball players that used either steroids or human growth hormone, he admitted that he used HGH. | |
| And he said, the reason I used it is because it helps me heal faster. | |
| And when I heard that, it didn't bother me that much. | |
| Now, it's against the rules. | |
| You've got to follow the rules, whatever the rules happen to be. | |
| Originally, they didn't have any of these rules, and people were juiced, etc. | |
| But then they were juiced, and everybody knew they were juiced, but the public loved all the home runs that some of these guys were hitting. | |
| Jose Canseco wrote that. | |
| And the owners knew about it. | |
| Yeah, everybody knew about it, but everybody loved watching the home runs being hit. | |
| I mean, these guys were bulked up. | |
| I mean, they were twice the size. | |
| You look at pictures from 10 years ago. | |
| They didn't even look like the same person. | |
| Well, after the 1994 work stoppage, they needed a way to get the fans back. | |
| That's a good point. | |
| Anyway, so he goes on in this piece, and this just interests me because there's a lot of issues in play here. | |
| Because, you know, look at somebody like we now have the, we all know that the NCAA continues to tiptoe around the issue, announcing that trans athletes can carry on competing in women's sports and will only have to document testosterone levels required by their relative discipline. | |
| And this, as any scientist will attest, is to ignore the glaring reality that testosterone reduction alone does nothing to tackle the inequality created by vastly superior male body mass and muscle strength for many years of testosterone before transitioning. | |
| And the aforementioned Caitlin Jenner, who is perhaps the most qualified person in the world to pass judgment on this debate, accused the NCAA of kicking the can down the road. | |
| And apparently in an interview, said in the Leah Thomas case, I don't care about her testosterone levels now for at least, you know, year for the last year or two. | |
| I care about her testosterone levels for the first 16 or 17 years of her life. | |
| That's what we are fighting against here. | |
| And she added that she herself refuses to play in all women's golf tournaments because of her unfair advantages, that body structure, length of arms, size of feet, size of my hands. | |
| She explained I have no more testosterone going through my body and I can still outdrive all girls by 100 yards. | |
| I can reach every par, par five and two, and it's just not fair. | |
| So I would never play a tournament, a women's tournament. | |
| So it just brings up an interesting issue. | |
| Then you couple this with a FoxNews.com article. | |
| The headline is, NCAA leaders are deliberately turning this blind eye to injustices in women's sports. | |
| You know, quote, they used to call me the fastest girl in Connecticut, but I couldn't outrun an injustice. | |
| For years, I competed as a high school runner, made it to the state championships every one of those years, but in my junior year, I lost four of the state titles I earned to males who identified as females. | |
| Now, they give awards based on who wins, typically the person with the strongest muscles, the greatest lung power, the fastest speed, not based on how a person identifies. | |
| At the end of the race, it's about biology, not gender identity. | |
| No amount of testosterone suppression can change a male's innate physical advantages like bone structure and muscle mass. | |
| We're talking about Chelsea Mitchell, 16 Connecticut state champion, and she's speaking out loudly about it. | |
| And as fast as I am, I can't outrun those advantages or the injustice that protects them. | |
| So I've read enough now. | |
| I mean, I don't know why this, for some reason, I'm not paying a lot of attention to this at all. | |
| And then today, it just caught my attention first with Piers Morgan's article, and then the subsequent article on FoxNews.com. | |
| And I wanted to get your take on it. | |
| What do you think? | |
| You know, I'm really struggling with this a lot. | |
| I think that there seems to be a concerted effort by a lot of people right now to be the next group of the most offended and the most insulted. | |
| And in our effort to not offend and insult anyone in the woke community, we're all going right to sleep. | |
| I think it's a problem. | |
| You know, women and men, biologically, however you identify, whatever you want to say, whatever your pronoun is, that's your business. | |
| You do you, whatever that is. | |
| Yeah, I agree. | |
| But at the end of the day, by the way, I think most people agree with that. | |
| I don't think so. | |
| Yeah, I would too. | |
| We could sit here and act like we really care. | |
| Nobody really cares. | |
| You know what the worst thing that can happen for a lot of people? | |
| You say, hey, how you doing? | |
| And they start telling you the answer. | |
| If it's somebody that's not going to be afraid of the people. | |
| Right, the answer is good or fine. | |
| And keep on moving. | |
| That's the fine. | |
| A rough day, but otherwise doing pretty good. | |
| I can deal with that. | |
| But if they start telling you every woe they have in the world, you're like, why did I ask? | |
| Exactly. | |
| I mean, and I think that there comes to a certain, there's a certain level of social etiquette that comes into understanding that. | |
| And I think for women that have competed their whole lives to get to a certain caliber where now this sport that they love and they're very good at, that they're able to compete professionally, and it's being taken away from them because someone else has decided that they want to also compete in this sport, but they want to compete in it in a way that no amount of training from being a woman would ever allow you to be able to compete at that level just simply because of genetics. | |
| So whether this person has had testosterone suppression for a year, they've had it in their body their entire life. | |
| I think that is the most important line in the Piers Morgan piece. | |
| But again, that's my testosterone level now, the last two years. | |
| I care about her testosterone level for the first 16 or 17 years of life. | |
| That's what we're fighting against here. | |
| But I also agree with Piers Morgan on the other part. | |
| I don't think most people care. | |
| And nobody would go through this lengthy physical, emotional whirlwind if they didn't really want to do this. | |
| And you believe in equality. | |
| And frankly, how about we leave people the hell alone? | |
| That's my attitude in life. | |
| But see, no one is leaving anybody alone. | |
| They want to go through this change in this process, whatever that is for them. | |
| And that's fine. | |
| But the problem is, is now your process is detrimental to other people. | |
| And is that fair? | |
| At what point is your wokeness now affecting other people in a negative way? | |
| And at what point are we allowed to say that's not okay? | |
| Well, I think that's what Piers Morgan was saying here. | |
| I think that's what also Caitlyn Jenner is saying here. | |
| And I think that that's fair. | |
| I've actually had long discussions with Caitlyn about this. | |
| And honestly, as a man, when he competed in the Olympics, he can speak to that. | |
| You know, what he went through and what that was like. | |
| And there are just some biological things that come into play here. | |
| You know, a woman can give birth to a child. | |
| That is a biological fact. | |
| So until, unless and until that changes, a biological woman is what will give birth to a child. | |
| You know, a biological man is not able to do that. | |
| So even when you go through some of these transgender procedures, you know, they're still working on figuring out how to do menstruation and all these other things. | |
| And so this is all still a work in progress. | |
| So as of right now. | |
| But I think the argument that is the correct argument is that you have to recognize that somebody born biologically a man that transitions, the testosterone level at that point is meaningless. | |
| I think the science behind it is the 17 years, the bigger hands, the build, the physical strength, stamina. | |
| It's not saying there's any superiority of one sex over another. | |
| It's just saying it gives an unfair advantage. | |
| And at that point, you have to say it's got to be a level playing field. | |
| And in these cases, it's not a level playing field. | |
| That's the bottom line. | |
| But I also think that these are decisions that have to be made by adults. | |
| I don't think that the decisions that's what the whole article on Fox News dot com is about is the NCAA leaders are turning a blind eye to what they call injustices in women's sports. | |
| You know, I mean, look at this case. | |
| Apparently, this 11th grader from Connecticut, you know, the state champion, you know, is being beaten by people that have transitioned from being men into women. | |
| And otherwise, nobody, no woman that was born biologically a woman can beat her. | |
| None so far that they found. | |
| It's just not fair. | |
| It really takes out the sportsmanlike conduct of the sport. | |
| And that is when I think we need to start having honest conversations about biological comparisons and what we're dealing with now. | |
| And I think there may need to be another division. | |
| You want smart political talk without the meltdowns? | |
| We got you. | |
| I'm Carol Markowitz. | |
| And I'm Mary Catherine Hamm. | |
| We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently. | |
| Normally is about real conversations. | |
| Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic. | |
| We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day. | |
| Join us every Tuesday and Thursday. |