The US Supreme Court Is Illegitimate

Lawrence O'Donnell said it better than anyone we've heard so far this evening on "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell."

"Donald Trump did something that no one-term president has ever done before. He appointed 3 Supreme Court justices. The last president to appoint 3 Supreme Court Justices was Ronald Reagan and it took him 8 years to do it. 

Donald Trump, the president least capable in our history of evaluating candidates for the United States Supreme Court got to appoint three of them and all three of them are voting to revoke a constitutional right.

70% of the country is opposed to what the Supreme Court is doing and in a democracy this could never happen, but we do not live in a democracy because of the Electoral College and the United States Senate.

The only way the Alito opinion can get a majority vote in the Supreme Court now is thanks to the Electoral College installing two Republican presidents who came in second with the voters. Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush but George W. Bush got the presidency thanks to the Electoral College. Donald Trump came in 2nd with the voters by a wide margin but was installed in the presidency by the Electoral College.

Democrats in the United States Senate represent far more people than the Republicans represent but both parties have the same number of seats in the United States Senate because of the profoundly anti-democratic formula that each state gets two senators.

The 44 million people of California get 2 senators and the 1.6 million people of the Dakotas get 4. That is not democracy. That can never be democracy and so 70% of the country is living tonight under the anguish and the weight of minority rule. 70% of the country is losing a constitutional right against their will. 70% of the country has had the constitutional right for their entire lives, but for Samuel Alito that is not deeply rooted in our nation’s history.

There is one president in our history who was impeached twice, and never won a majority vote in a presidential election and he got to appoint the same number of justices as Ronald Reagan, who won 49 states in his reelection campaign. There is one president in our history who provoked serious public discussions of using the 25th Amendment to remove him from office, and he got to appoint 3 Supreme Court justices.

The first public discussion of using the 25th Amendment with Donald Trump that I’m aware of to remove him from office was on this program during the first month of the Trump presidency and we now know that in the last month of the Trump presidency, in the last days of the Trump presidency there were serious discussions about removing Donald Trump using the 25th Amendment and those discussions were taking place among congressional leadership in both parties.

Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the House Republicans participated in discussions about removing Donald Trump using the 25th Amendment after the January 6th attack on the capital. Today the authors of the new titled book, “This Will Not Pass,” released audio tape of Kevin McCarthy in a meeting with House Republican leadership discussing the possible impeachment of Donald Trump and the possibility of removing him from office using the 25th Amendment.

The president they were talking about got to appoint 3 Supreme Court justices after coming in 2nd with the voters and after Mitch McConnell defied the Constitution and refused to bring President Obama’s last Supreme Court nominee to a vote in the Senate so that Donald Trump could choose one of the names on Mitch McConnell’s list to fill the seat on the Supreme Court that the Constitution said should have been filled by President Obama.

Such is the Constitutional treachery of Republican minority rule in the 21st century which is well on its way to being deeply rooted in this country’s history."

[We wanted to get this up as quickly as possible so people can begin considering this information sooner rather than later. We didn't have a second pair of eyes tonight so please email us if you notice any typos. [email protected] We don't read hate mail. We just close it and delete it.]

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