Fox News reporter Peter Doocy continued his run as a thorn in the side of White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday when he asked her to justify comments President Joe Biden previously made denigrating the idea of packing the Supreme Court.
The White House announced Friday that Biden is forming a commission to explore packing the court. That commission will include “a bipartisan group of experts on the Court and the Court reform debate.”
White House: “Topics it will examine include the genesis of the reform debate; the Court’s role in the Constitutional system; the length of service and turnover of justices on the Court; the membership and size of the Court; and the Court’s case selection, rules, and practices.
— NBC News (@NBCNews) April 9, 2021
Perhaps Biden is attempting to keep the rabid leftists in his party at bay. Perhaps he doesn’t even know what’s going on, and that commission was formed for him. Biden never came out and spoke to reporters about the issue, so we don’t know.
But along with all the other violations of constitutional and governmental mores, the left is now coming for the high court.
Naturally, during Friday’s daily media briefing, Doocy brought up the commission — and noted Biden was crystal clear in the past that he thought packing the court was bad for the country.
Doocy Time!!!
Peter Doocy asks Jen Psaki about why would President Biden launch a commission to look at expanding the Supreme Court when, back in 1983, he said doing so was “a bonehead idea when FDR tried it.” pic.twitter.com/QQAim1c2ri
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 9, 2021
Doocy stated that “President Biden once said, in 1983, he thought court-packing was –,” but was cut off by Psaki, who seemed intent to preempt a valid question with snark.
“Whoa. A time-back machine,” Psaki said, according to an official White House transcript of the briefing.
“Oh, yeah,” Doocy remarked. “He said he thought that court-packing was a ‘bonehead idea’ when FDR tried it. So why ask a panel now to go and see if it is a good idea?”
What did Doocy get, other than snark? Well, he didn’t get an answer to his question from the inept press secretary.
“Well, first, he’s — the panel is being asked to do a number of — take a number of steps,” stammered Psaki, “including the pros and cons on exactly that issue.”
“But they will also be looking at the Court’s role in the constitutional system; the length of service and turnover of justice on the Court — justices on the Court; the membership and size of the Court; and the Court’s case selection rules and practices,” she said on the matter.
“And the makeup of this commission, which was vital for the President, was — is there are progressives on the Court, there are conservatives on the Court. People will present different opinions and different points of view, and then they’ll have a report at the end of 180 days,” she concluded.
That was it. No explanation and no acknowledgment of Doocy’s actual question.
Psaki dismissed Doocy’s inquiry before he’d even asked it, and then she blathered on. It was as if she was insisting that things people in power say don’t matter. Perhaps the far-left press secretary views some comments from Biden, a man who at one point embraced bipartisanship, as having expired.
Biden was clear on what he thought of court-packing in 1983, when he chastised former President Franklin Roosevelt for his New Deal-era scheme to load the court with more liberal justices.
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“President Roosevelt clearly had the right to send to the United States Senate and the United States Congress a proposal to pack the court,” Biden said in a clip unearthed two years ago by The Washington Free Beacon.
“It was totally within his right to do that. He violated no law, he was legalistically absolutely correct, but it was a bonehead idea,” Biden added at the time. “It was a terrible, terrible mistake to make, and it put in question for an entire decade the independence of the most significant body — including the Congress in my view — the most significant body in this country, the Supreme Court of the United States of America.”
Biden noted FDR’s “objective” was transparent. So is his administration’s. This is a man who multiple times in his almost five-decade political career was clear that he abhorred the idea of interfering with the Supreme Court. Why the change of heart now?
With Biden’s ink pen running the country, you can assume, those pushing him on policy don’t seem to care whether he stays consistent on major issues. Psaki, meanwhile, would apparently prefer people forget that at one point, her boss had some semblance of a backbone.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
