Cruz warns threat of Democrats packing Supreme Court 'is very real'

Democrats will seek to expand the Supreme Court if they retake the Senate and Joe Biden wins the White House this fall, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Fox News' "Life, Liberty & Levin" in an interview airing Sunday. 

"I don't think it's a bluff," Cruz told host Mark Levin. "Joe Biden is trying to hide from it. At the debate, he ran away screaming when asked. But I think that's where the Democratic Party is, and it's about power and it's about forcing compliance and I think we need to take that threat very, very seriously."

Cruz is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is scheduled to begin hearings on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Oct. 12. Democrats and Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine have said that the Senate should not act on any nomination to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg until after the election.

"If the president of the United States [Donald Trump] had not nominated somebody, he would be the first president of the United States to not nominate somebody in the last year of a first term or a second term," Levin told Cruz. "As you well know, 22 presidents before him have done exactly the same thing. Twenty-nine nominees have been virtually exactly the same position as Amy Coney Barrett."

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The host then accused Democrats of planning to "destroy the Supreme Court" by increasing the number of justices, "pack the United States Senate" by adding the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as states, and "destroy the [legislative] filibuster so they can get the Bernie Sanders-Joe Biden manifesto passed en masse without any opposition."

"In other words," Levin told Cruz, "they're going to burn down our constitutional system. Isn't that what they're saying?"

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"That's exactly right," agreed Cruz, the author of the forthcoming book, "One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History." 

"And the left, they believe in government," he added. "They believe in totalitarian control. The left, statists, are willing to use force ... The left is much more comfortable using force to enforce compliance. So when it comes to, for example, speech, the left wants to censor everyone who disagrees with [them].

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"And a lot of people say, 'Well, both sides do it,'" Cruz went on. "No, that's not right. You and I aren't calling for Bernie Sanders or AOC to be censored. I'm actually perfectly fine for them to yabber on incessantly. Their ideas are are foolish and dangerous. And I think the best way to respond to it is sunlight and more attention. But the left is willing to use force."