Tucker: Biden only talks about skin color
Tucker Carlson discusses how President Biden chooses his nominees based off of affirmative action and how identity politics always ends with tribal warfare.
So here's a weird story - so many of those these days - if you were anywhere near the Supreme Court in Washington this past spring, you may have seen a black box truck with New Jersey plates and a billboard on the side parked by the side of the road. The message read "Breyer, Retire. It's time for a Black woman Supreme Court justice. There's no time to waste." Those billboards were funded by a group of progressive Democrats called Demand Justice, which weirdly enough is run by an extremely White guy called Brian Fallon, which is a little strange if you think about it.
If Brian Fallon is so passionate about giving leadership roles to Black women, why hasn’t he resigned from his job and given it to one? You wonder that about a lot of people. Joe Biden, for example.
In any case, you've got to hand it to Brian Fallon. Either he is remarkably prescient or someone in power was listening to him, because just this morning was announced that Stephen Breyer is indeed retiring from the Supreme Court.
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And you notice the passive construction there. It was announced. Because Breyer himself did not announce his retirement. It's not even clear Breyer knew the announcement was going to happen. Someone leaked that news with or without Justice Breyer's consent. They didn't wait for him to do it himself. Why? Well, because Democrats understand they're likely to lose the Congress this November. They want to control Breyer’s seat while they still can. So what are they going to do with that seat? We don't need to guess. Joe Biden was very clear about his plans nearly two years ago as he was running for president. He didn't tell us what he was going to do about COVID or foreign policy or the economy, but he was very precise about the Supreme Court.
Here's Biden in March 2020 on the debate stage of CNN:
JOE BIDEN: I committed that if I'm elected president and have an opportunity to appoint someone to the courts will be I'll appoint the first Black woman to the courts. If my cabinet, my administration will look like the country and I commit that, I will in fact appoint a, I’ll pick a woman to be vice president.
I will appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court. That was Biden's promise. All right. But which Black woman exactly? Biden didn't tell us. Biden didn't mention the Supreme Court nominee’s legal qualifications or judicial philosophy or ability to perform one of the most important jobs in the country. He didn't even tell us she was a nice person. All he said was she's going to be Black and she's going to be female, because to him, that's all that mattered.
Associate Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer (Reuters)
You almost got the impression that Joe Biden believes all Black women are the same. They're identical. It was certainly the assumption in the Delaware of Joe Biden's youth 60 years ago. Biden doesn't seem to have changed much.
You wonder if anyone sitting there in CNN’s audience that night even noticed this. It's possible we've all marinated for so long in the casual racism of affirmative action that it seems normal now to reduce human beings to their race. But imagine if this was happening to you. How would you feel? You go to law school, you win a clerkship, you get a seat on some lower court. One day you're nominated to be one of the top nine judges in the country. And you're proud of that. Why wouldn't you? Your parents are proud. Your friends are proud.
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But Joe Biden, all Joe Biden can talk about is your skin color. Patronizing doesn't even begin to describe what this is. This is exactly why decent Americans hated segregation. It dehumanized people. Now, Biden claims that his race counting is essential so that the court and the rest of his administration "look like America."
Of all the lies that Joe Biden tells, this could be the easiest to check. We have the latest census numbers, and we can promise you with dead certainty that Joe Biden's nominees look nothing like America, not even close.
Is that a problem? Well, the problem for Biden is that once he starts saying things like this, once he begins to promise to represent every possible ethnic voting bloc equally, like some ward boss in 1950 Chicago, people are going to start to wonder about their representation. As long as we're divvying up the spoils like carrot cake, where's my slice?
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So, Biden will nominate a Black woman. Great, she'll represent about seven percent of the population. But where's Biden's Pacific Islander nominee? Mazie Hirono, is probably writing an outrageous letter about that right now. No doubt she is.
And why isn't there an American Indian on the court or a genderqueer or someone from the chronic fatigue syndrome community or a justice with cognitive disabilities? Why isn't there an Afghan refugee under consideration? You can laugh, but suddenly these are entirely fair questions, and by the way, Joe Biden, you claim that trans lives matter, really, do you really mean that? Then prove it? What kind of woman is this anyway you plan to nominate? What are her pronouns?
You can see where this is going, where it always goes. Identity politics always ends with tribal warfare. It's funny the Biden people can't see that maybe they can see it and don't care, or maybe it's the entire point of the exercise.
Whatever the explanation, the White House has no choice at this point but to make good on Joe Biden's promise. Usual race mongers spent all day demanding it. Here's CNN:
GLORIA BORGER: It is a history-making moment. … It will change the way the court looks. And we cannot understate that.
ABBY PHILLIPS: For this particular president, where he is today, with a need to give something that is of great importance to his supporters, people who put him into office, especially Black women, this is a really important moment.
LAURA COATES: I never had the luxury of leaving any part of my identity at the door before I walked into a courtroom. Walked into a boardroom. Walked onto these very sets on CNN. I brought with myself the entirety of being a Black woman, the lived experience of what that’s like in a country like this. I think it’s incumbent upon our country to recognize that if we do not bring all of America and the holistic views of people including Black women then we are doing a disservice to any objective evaluation of laws in this country.
Oh, this is so great, that lady, especially. Here you have the most privileged people in the United States of America telling you at high volume with total certainty, they're victims. Now that could describe most of CNN’s programming, actually. But that was especially hysterical. That oppressed woman is Laura Coates. Laura Coates went to an expensive private school in Minnesota. Then she headed off to Princeton, and then she went to law school. Now she's on TV, all because of how victimized she has been.
It's almost enough to make you like America when you learn that someone that completely marginalized is now so powerful. Sounds like a success story. But no, explains Laura Coates. In fact, it's still more evidence that America is an evil and racist place.
JOHN KING: What would it be like for somebody on the Supreme Court? Finally, who looks like you?
LAURA COATES: I would be overjoyed and thrilled.
How much does John King hate himself? He's got to, right, on some level saying stuff like that. What would it be like to finally see some of the Supreme Court who looks like you. Thank God. Finally, Laura Coates can have some justice in this country at long last. Maybe someone will send her to Princeton for free again just to make it official. She's been liberated.
But wait a second, color counters. What about Clarence Thomas? He's sort of vaguely looks like Laura Coates, the lady you just saw on TV. Same race anyway. Does he count? No, he doesn't count. Clarence Thomas isn't a race monger. He believes in the Constitution of the United States. He’s a Supreme Court justice. Therefore, he's not really Black. See how that works? He doesn't count.
So who are the potential nominees CNN has declared are authentically Black and therefore eligible for this job? Well, let's see. There’s Sherrilyn Ifill. She’s not even a judge. She's some kind of political activist who works at the NAACP. Her primary credential, and she listed this prominently in her online biography herself, is that she was one of Glamor Magazine's Woman of the Year in 2020. Laugh, if you will. But I mean, why is that not a qualification? Glamor Magazine’s Woman of the Year in 2020? Sends her forth to the Supreme Court.
And then look at her Twitter page. Ifill’s Twitter page is full of racist attacks against dreaded White people. Here's one example from July of 2018. "Truth and reconciliation efforts have little chance in many places because Whites view truth-telling is an act of violence."
Really? They do? All Whites? Yes. According to Sherrilyn Ifill, they're all the same. Same skin color. Same belief. Now, that's a common attitude on the left is not a reassuring attitude for a Supreme Court justice. We'll see how she does.
Meanwhile, CNN is also recommending a woman called Eunice Lee. Eunice Lee may be a perfectly nice person, we don't know, but she first became a judge in August 2021. That was, let’s do the math, less than six months ago.
Candice Jackson Academy has even less experience and she may be nice as well, but she reached the bench for the first time in July of last year.
The other nominees on CNN's list have more judicial experience. We'll give you three guesses to how they got that experience. How’d they get there? Wilhelmina Mimi Wright, became an associate justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court back in 2012. Now, the sad thing about what we're about to tell you is Mimi Wright may be the best judge ever, the smartest person ever. But as always, the media minimized her, dehumanized her in its coverage.
The media celebrated her nomination not because of her legal ability, which they barely describe, but because of the way she looks her skin color. And that is a big part of why Gov. Mark Dayton appointed her in the first place. He said that. Here's how the Star Tribune covered her appointment. "Dayton's historic choice first black female Supreme Court justice." That was the headline.
Unmentioned is how she might do on the Supreme Court. Again, nobody wins in identity politics. The people it's designed to help are completely dehumanized and patronized, reduced to colors rather than human beings. And in some cases, the rest of us get really crappy service because the best people aren't being chosen. That's just true.
Ability is the only criterion that matters. Skin color is relevant. Ketanji Brown Jackson got the same treatment. To be fair, we should note that, unlike other candidates CNN is putting forward, Brown Jackson has authentically suffered in her life. She's not joking. She literally went to Harvard with Joy Reid.
REID: I happen to know Ketanji Brown Jackson. I know her as Ketanji Brown, when we were in college, so I think she’s wonderful.
Imagine what that was like. You went to college with Joy Reid? I was in Fallujah. You went to college with Joy Reid, who suffered more? Well, after leaving the rough and tumble of Cambridge with Joy Reid, Brown Jackson wound up on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last summer. What were her credentials? Here’s how ABC News covered her confirmation at the time. They told us Jackson is "the first Black woman confirmed to an appellate court in a decade," and she now is one of five Black female Circuit Court judges currently serving. But hey, who's counting?
You have to wonder - Brown Jackson, and we don't know, may be a super great person, a really smart person – but would you feel if you were her? What about her achievements? Irrelevant. The media focused on her race, and maybe there was a reason for that because her actual record as a judge is honestly pretty awful. She's been overturned unanimously by the D.C. appellate court multiple times in just the past few years.
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So you have to wonder at this point since we’re going by skin color and gender, why Joe Biden is ignoring the obvious choice. Why doesn't Biden strike a real blow for equity and just nominee Bridgett Floyd? Who’s that? Well, it’s George Floyd's sister. She's not a judge or a lawyer or whatever. But at this stage, who cares? Clearly, that's not the point anymore. This law stuff.
As Nebraska Senator Roman Hruska once said in defense of one of Richard Nixon's dumber judicial nominees "even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They're entitled to a little representation, aren't they?" Well, sure, they are, Bridgett Floyd could be justice for the rest of us. Or at least a slice of the rest of us.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the January 27, 2022, edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
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