Did Senator Chuck Schumer finally go too far with his intimidating remarks aimed at SCOTUS Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh? (YouTube, MSNBC)
Momentum appears to be building to hold New York Sen. Charles Schumer, Senate minority leader and career gun grabber, accountable for remarks he made toward Associate Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, and many believe it should have happened years ago.
Schumer, addressing a crowd of abortion activists, displayed the same demagoguery he’s exhibited for years against the nation’s gun owners. Long story short, according to the senator’s critics, is that his “My way or the Highway” mentality may have finally gotten the better of him.
Schumer’s reaction to the scathing criticism: “I am from Brooklyn,” which struck The Hill’s Jonathan Turley as a rather tepid justification for his bad behavior. According to Turley, Schumer’s “Brooklyn” explanation was “meant to excuse threats he has made against two conservative justices the day before on the steps of the Supreme Court. His ‘apology’ seemed to be a mix of claiming a license for all New Yorkers to use ‘strong language’ and claiming justification because some justices are ‘working hand in glove’ with Republicans.”
At the National Review, writer Carrie Campbell Severino posited that Schumer’s remarks were part of a campaign he “has been waging to hyper-politicize the bench for a generation, going back to his support in 2003 for the unprecedented filibusters of circuit court nominees who had ‘deeply held views.’ By which he meant views that differ from his own deeply held views, and regardless of whether his views track anything actually in the Constitution.”
Writing in the Detroit News, David Harsanyi opined, “Schumer’s thuggish attack on Kavanaugh and Gorsuch is a transparent attempt to intimidate justices. And wow — a sitting senator threatening an independent judiciary. Surely the champions of norms and decency will be horrified by this development.”
However, Harsanyi predicted attention to Schumer’s threat will get far less coverage than what President Donald Trump received after he suggested that Justices Sonya Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg recuse themselves from cases that come before the court if those cases are Trump-related. That’s as much a slap at the press as it is against the veteran senator.
But in the Second Amendment community, it was the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms that actually called on Schumer to resign from the Senate.
“Intimidation and thuggish behavior seems to be a pattern among anti-gun Democrats in the Senate,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb observed. “Regardless the issue, nobody of Schumer’s stature should ever engage in the kind of boorishness that produced the senator’s vile remarks. Schumer’s problem is that he’s made a habit of it, and he’s always gotten a pass. Maybe that might come to a halt after being rebuked by (Senate Majority Leader Mitch) McConnell, but unfortunately, I doubt it.”
Gottlieb, who has never been a Schumer fan, put it bluntly: “Can you imagine the reaction if a Republican senator had made a similar remark about Justices Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan at a gun rights rally? This is the real Chuck Schumer, a Capitol Hill bully who has engaged in political demagoguery for decades in an effort to crush the Second Amendment and silence citizens and organizations who have defended the right to bear arms.”
The Capitol Hill press corps has allowed Schumer to get away with “political demagoguery” for decades. By not holding him accountable, the media has enabled Schumer and emboldened him to the point where he evidently no longer fears the kind of retribution he vowed for Kavanaugh and Gorsuch when he declared, “I want to tell you, Gorsuch! I want to tell you, Kavanaugh! You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price! You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Schumer perhaps complimented the two associate justices in a back-handed way. To feel the kind of regret he forecast for Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, he obviously believes them to be men of conscience and character.
Since Schumer apparently isn’t worried about the same sort of accountability for his own behavior—because he’s “from Brooklyn”—he may have just admitted those are qualities he lacks.
