Before MSNBC’s The ReidOut decided on Wednesday to only mention the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearings once, Tuesday’s show was filled with rank sexism against Barrett as panelists ruled that “this woman” and “this lady” was akin to the Proud Boys, guilty of collusion with the Trump administration to get rid of ObamaCare, a real-life SNL skit, and too dumb to understand the law.
The Beat host Ari Melber went down the collusion route after Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) finished wrapping her questioning of Barrett, praising her for pressing Barrett about when she had written a law review article disagreeing with the first ObamaCare case and received “this plum promotion from the President” as if to insinuate some quid pro quo. As usual with the liberal media, Barrett didn't actually condemn the Affordable Care Act itself.
Melber admitted that there was no evidence of any of that, but he nonetheless praised Harris as “very effective” for having made that case and painted Barrett as “a pawn.”
Democratic Senator-turned-MSNBC analyst Claire McCaskill concurred with Harris’s conspiracy theory (click “expand”):
MCCASKILL: She was named to a list by Donald Trump during the election that she was going to be considered for the Supreme Court. And she wants you to believe she doesn’t know what the president was saying about what he wanted on the Supreme Court? I mean, that is just flatly unbelievable. So she’s trying to make us believe that, after she’s on the list for the Supreme Court, and Donald Trump gets elected, she just happens to write an article that just happens to be published the same month he’s inaugurated calling out John Roberts for the wrong decision on the ACA and then she gets appointed to the judiciary five months later. This is what Kamala did and if Kamala had a closing argument, which she may tomorrow, then she will pull all those pieces together and go, do you believe this witness? Do you believe she didn’t know this is what Donald Trump wanted?
JOY REID: Yeah.
MCCASKILL: Of course she knew. You don’t get on a list to be appointed to the Supreme Court and not pay attention to what the potential President is saying about the Supreme Court. I mean —
REID: Yes.
MCCASKILL: — I thought that was the most effective thing that happened today.
Fresh off having embarrassed himself as a despicable partisan by suggesting Barrett’s a racist toward her own children, The Nation’s Elie Mystal grimaced and screamed about Barrett not committing to recusing herself from any election-related cases.
“It is not a political controversy about whether or not the President of the United States should leave office if he is — if he doesn’t win an election. That’s not controversial. That’s a simple thing and the fact that she couldn’t give a simple answer to that is easily the most terrifying and disturbing thing to come out of today,” he screeched.
Because she wouldn’t speak to any hypothetical cases that may arise, Mystal insisted Barrett must believe Trump doesn’t “ha[ve] to transfer power peacefully” and he can pick his own judges to keep him office.
For her part, poisonous host Joy Reid didn’t find Barrett to be intelligent, mocking her as a real, live SNL skit:
[I]f this were an SNL skit, one of the senators would say, Ms. Coney Barrett, what time is it? And she’d say, I’m not here to commit to answering that question about time. I know time exists, but — you know what I mean? Like, I mean, she just literally just sort of went blank whenever someone asked her a factual question about the law.
Reid debased Barrett as “this lady” when she next tried to diagnose another refusal from Barrett to engage in a hypothetical (this time on voter intimidation) as proof she might not know the law: “[T]his lady is — let’s just remind her, she’s a sitting judge right now. So, she theoretically knows the law. Amy Klobuchar, who I think also was a very effective questioner today, asked her a pretty simple, straightforward question: Is voter intimidation illegal?”
After a clip of Klobuchar questioning Barrett, Reid bemoaned: “Elie, would a reasonable person be intimidated by armed gunmen standing at the polls? I mean, you know, it's only annoying if you think they know the answer.”
The walking Notable Quotable Mystal replied with the Proud Boys comparison: “It’s almost like Donald Trump is telling her, stand back and stand by, right?”
This left the ethically-plagued Reid chuckling, so Mystal kept plowing along about how “this woman” lacks any and all “character” (click “expand”):
Again, we have to understand what this woman is being sent to do. We have to understand why it is so important for Donald Trump to get this justice on this court before this election. And, again, we don’t have to look very far. Trump has already told us he wants the Supreme Court to look at the ballots.
It would be the easiest thing in the world for her to say, you know what, I’m not going to do that. You know what? I really want this job. I really think I have worked my whole life to get to this point, but there is absolutely no way that I’m going to rule on an election for the President that just nominated me during the election. It would be the easiest thing in the world for her to do. The fact that she won’t do it tells you all you need to know about her character and all you need to know about what she intends to do if she gets confirmed before the election.
Speaking of dishonesty, Reid moved a few minutes later to air a deceptively-edited clip the liberal media have spread far and wide about a 2016 appearance Barrett made on CBSN that appeared to suggest she was against filling Supreme Court vacancies in a presidential election year.
As National Review and even The Washington Post has noted, she suggested nothing of the sort. Rather, she took note of what The Post’s Aaron Blake described as “how rare” a vacancy fight “would be in divided government — a situation we don’t have today, with a president and Senate controlled by the same party.”
MSNBC’s sexist smears and dismissals of Barrett possessing any level of intelligence was made possible by advertisers such as ClearChoice and Qunol. Follow the links to the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
To see the MSNBC transcript from October 13, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s The ReidOut
October 13, 2020
7:26 p.m. EasternARI MELBER: And then point number two, I thought, where Harris was most effective, Joy, was she made the argument, in inference, that Donald Trump wanted Barrett under the precondition that she will be against ObamaCare. And she didn’t make that as some wide-ranging allegation. She teased it out of her in what I think many viewers may have noticed was the most tense moment of these exchanges. Well, when did you know about this? When did you know about that? Okay. And your article or your writings about ObamaCare, your criticism thereof, came right before — oh, isn’t that interesting? — right before you got this plum promotion from the president originally. Now, let’s be clear and fair. That’s not proof, right? You have Donald Trump’s own tweets for the proof what he wants out of these judges. So I don’t think it necessarily impugns the judge. But I thought Harris was very effective at saying, the Trump agenda is getting ObamaCare, you’re going to be a pawn in that, here’s the evidence for that.
(....)
7:28 p.m. Eastern
CLAIRE MCCASKILL: She was named to a list by Donald Trump during the election that she was going to be considered for the Supreme Court. And she wants you to believe she doesn’t know what the president was saying about what he wanted on the Supreme Court? I mean, that is just flatly unbelievable. So she’s trying to make us believe that, after she’s on the list for the Supreme Court, and Donald Trump gets elected, she just happens to write an article that just happens to be published the same month he’s inaugurated calling out John Roberts for the wrong decision on the ACA and then she gets appointed to the judiciary five months later. This is what Kamala did and if Kamala had a closing argument, which she may tomorrow, then she will pull all those pieces together and go, do you believe this witness? Do you believe she didn’t know this is what Donald Trump wanted?
JOY REID: Yeah.
MCCASKILL: Of course she knew. You don’t get on a list to be appointed to the Supreme Court and not pay attention to what the potential president is saying about the Supreme Court. I mean —
REID: Yes.
MCCASKILL: — I thought that was the most effective thing that happened today.
REID: Yeah, and you — we should note that Kamala Harris point out that — pointed out that Amy Coney Barrett wrote articles and also signed on to adverts opposing the Affordable Care Act in 2006 and then in 2013, so she’s on the record as where she stands on the Affordable Care Act and on abortion, all these — she’s on the record on a lot of this.
(....)
7:31 p.m. Eastern
ELIE MYSTAL: It is not a political controversy about whether or not the President of the United States should leave office if he is — if he doesn’t win an election. That’s not controversial. That’s a simple thing and the fact that she couldn’t give a simple answer to that is easily the most terrifying and disturbing thing to come out of today. Now, I think, in general, Kamala Harris and Cory Booker just showed you how you do things downtown. I know Ari is going to agree with me here, just the existence of a yes-or-no question, as opposed to asking an open-ended question and screaming, but give me a yes-or-no answer, is so, like, nice to see as a lawyer and Booker and Harris both did that expertly. But Booker being able to draw blood on this issue of whether or not a judge who wants to be on the Supreme Court thinks that the peaceful transfer of power is a thing that should happen is mind-blowing to me. And then Harris did, I think, something very important as well. She finally was the one who pinned Coney Barrett down on this question of recusal. The entire day, she’s been dancing the Tarantella around whether or not she would recuse, and, actually, it’s a law, and, actually, it’s a statute. No, it ain’t. It’s one person who gets to decide whether or not a Supreme Court justice recuses, that Supreme Court justice and Harris made her admit that it is in her sole discretion whether or not she recuses for a case, which is not just important for the ACA, which is what Harris was driving at, but it’s critically important for this election, where Barrett apparently doesn’t think the President has to transfer power peacefully. It is critically important that the President of the United States is not allowed to pick the judge in his own reelection campaign. That should be, again, a noncontroversial political opinion and Harris made it very clear that it is Amy Coney Barrett who gets to decide if Donald Trump gets to pick his own judges in this upcoming election lawsuit.
(....)
7:34 p.m. Eastern
REID: You know, Ari, if this were an SNL skit, one of the senators would say, Ms. Coney Barrett, what time is it? And she’d say, I’m not here to commit to answering that question about time. I know time exists, but — you know what I mean? Like, I mean, she just —
MELBER: Yes.
REID: — literally just sort of went blank whenever someone asked her a factual question about the law.
MELBER: Yeah, if it were an SNL skit, I think that’s on the money, Joy. If it were a text thread, it would be, when you ask someone something, and they just write back, “IDK,” I don’t know, over and over and over — [REID LAUGHS] — which is only annoying if you think they know, right? If true —
REID: right.
MELBER: — you’re like, all right, you don’t know.
(....)
7:36 p.m. Eastern
REID: This is one where — this lady is — let’s just remind her, she’s a sitting judge right now. So, she theoretically knows the law. Amy Klobuchar, who I think also was a very effective questioner today, asked her a pretty simple, straightforward question: Is voter intimidation illegal? Here’s what happened.
[KLOBUCHAR CLIP]
REID: Elie, would a reasonable person be intimidated by armed gunmen standing at the polls? I mean, you know, it's only annoying if you think they know the answer.
MYSTAL: It’s almost like Donald Trump is telling her, stand back and stand by, right? [REID LAUGHS] Again, we have to understand what this woman is being sent to do. We have to understand why it is so important for Donald Trump to get this justice on this court before this election. And, again, we don’t have to look very far. Trump has already told us he wants the Supreme Court to look at the ballots. It would be the easiest thing in the world for her to say, you know what, I’m not going to do that. You know what? I really want this job. I really think I have worked my whole life to get to this point, but there is absolutely no way that I’m going to rule on an election for the President that just nominated me during the election. It would be the easiest thing in the world for her to do. The fact that she won’t do it tells you all you need to know about her character and all you need to know about what she intends to do if she gets confirmed before the election.
