Liberal MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell on Tuesday played mind reader and asserted that the late Antonin Scalia would want Barack Obama to appoint his replacement. This claim is false. One would only have to ask... Antonin Scalia.
On his Last Word show, O’Donnell cited an exchange ex-Obama operative David Axelrod claimed to have with Scalia back in 2009. Allegedly, the conservative said, “Send us Elena Kagan [as a nominee].” From this, O’Donnell spun, “If that's the only evidence we have, private evidence of Justice Scalia's thinking, is that he would want the President to act in this situation and choose who the president wanted.”
Well, no. We know what Scalia wanted in a replacement because he said so. On the July 29, 2012 Fox News Sunday, the judge addressed the topic:
CHRIS WALLACE: You're 76 years old. Will you time your retirement so that a more conservative president can appoint a like-minded justice?
ANTONIN SCALIA: I would not like to be replaced by someone who immediately sets about undoing everything that I've tried to do for 25 years, 26 years. Sure. But, I mean, I shouldn't have to tell you that. Unless you think I'm a fool.
So, it’s clear that Scalia would not want this very liberal president to simply “choose” whomever he wanted. Given his contempt for the judge, the very idea that O’Donnell would speak for Scalia is beyond cynical. On June 29, 2015, the MSNBC host trashed the justice as a “terrible writer” and a “terrible thinker.” He smeared the conservative intellectual as the “Donald Trump of the Supreme Court.”
A transcript of the February 15 Last Word segment is below:
10:11pm ET
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Tom Goldstein, do we have a sense about how justice Scalia himself would privately react to this situation?
TOM GOLDSTEIN: Well, I have to say that the justice probably really recognized that the whole system was completely broken, that he treasured democracy. He loved the notion, actually, of executive power, that the president would have the authority to control nominations, not only within the White House and the executive branch but also the judiciary, and I think he would just shake his head at the whole process. He wouldn't say the Supreme Court's job was to fix it. He'd say that was somebody else's problem. But he would think this was shameful.
O’DONNELL: David Axelrod revealed over the weekend a conversation that he had had with Justice Scalia when there was a vacancy on the court in the Obama administration and Justice Scalia said, “you know, send us someone like Elena Kagan.” Very specifically, "Send us Elena Kagan." And so what we gleam from that, certainly if that's the only evidence we have, private evidence of Justice Scalia's thinking, is that he would want the president to act in this situation and choose who the president wanted.
DAVID FRUM: Well, I don't — no. I think in that situation Justice Scalia thought, well, there's going to be a liberal, let's get the best possible liberal and let's also get a liberal I find he personally congenial. And they became good friends. It is a club.
