Watch: McConnell says Democrats are 'threatening' institutions, declaring 'war on the rulebook itself'

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on the Senate floor Thursday tore into Democrats for allegedly "threatening" the courts, the Senate and other "governing institutions" to get their way on policy.

McConnell in the course of the six-minute-long remarks panned Democrats' efforts to make Washinton, D.C., a state, alleged threats to Supreme Court justices, talk of removing the legislative filibuster should Joe Biden be elected and more. McConnell, an institutionalist who has been a senator since 1985, is famous for his warning to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., that he would regret removing the filibuster for federal judges — before removing the filibuster for Supreme Court justices himself.

"No longer do disappointments for Democrats mean that Democrats need better arguments. Now, disappointments for Democrats are claimed as proof, proof, that our country is fundamentally broken or that James Madison messed something up," McConnell said. "So while we have far-left mobs attacking statues of our Founding Fathers from coast to coast, we have far-left politicians attacking the institutions those founders left us."

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The majority leader explicitly highlighted alleged threats Democrats have made toward the Supreme Court, including one instance in which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., stood outside the Supreme Court and specifically named Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch as they were hearing oral arguments on an abortion case inside.

"I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price!" Schumer said. "You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."

"The Democratic leader stood by the steps of the Supreme Court and directly threatened justices if they ruled the wrong way in the June Medical Services case," McConnell said. "This display aligned with a whole new tradition of Senate Democrats threatening judges. A year ago, several wrote the justices saying, quote, 'the court is not well [and] perhaps the court can heal itself before the public demands it be ‘restructured.'"

McConnell added: "In other words: Nice judicial independence you’ve got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it."

In this image from video, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks on the Senate floor at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Saturday, March 21, 2020. (Senate Television via AP)

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Democrats have raged against McConnell's rapid-fire efforts to confirm judges to the federal courts, particularly the circuit courts of appeals. The most recent judicial dispute in the Senate has its roots in McConnell and his Republican-led Senate's refusal to confirm a number of Obama judicial nominees toward the end of his term, and reached a boiling point when McConnell outright refused to hold a hearing on Obama Supreme Court nominee Judge Merrick Garland. Things have yet to cool down.

"Mr. Walker is a 37-year-old Federalist Society disciple who has more experience as a cable news commentator than he does trying cases in court," Schumer said of the recently confirmed Judge Justin Walker, who later this year will join Garland on the D.C. Circuit. "Mr. Walker’s nomination would be controversial in normal times, to say the least. During this public health crisis, his nomination is nothing short of a disgrace."

McConnell also hit Democrats for recent calls to remove the legislative filibuster for Biden, saying, "a coalition of left-wing special interests are explicitly, explicitly, campaigning for, quote, '51 for 51,'" a move he characterized as declaring "war on the rulebook itself."

With this "ill-gotten power," McConnell said, Democrats would "cement a presumed advantage by awarding the District of Columbia two Senate seats."

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He added: "They want to nuke the Senate to pack the Senate. This, Mr. President, is naked politics."

Ahead of Fourth of July weekend, when Americans will celebrate their founding and institutions, McConnell claimed these are under attack.

"We cannot let radicals tear down [the founders'] likenesses or their legacies," McConnell said. "We must preserve the gifts and the institutions we celebrate so our grandchildren and their grandchildren can celebrate them as well."