There has been a great deal of shushing and scolding and criticizing of Maxine Waters over the past number of weeks, because she has been provoked to speak out at what has amounted to the gobsmacked mugging of America, in broad daylight, by the Trump administration and the Republican Party.
Their despicable deeds, including the theft of a seat in our nation’s highest court should never be overlooked or made whole through misinformation.
It is journalistic malpractice to engage in discussions of Trump’s Supreme Court appointments without first acknowledging, or adding the disclaimer that one of those seats had been stolen.
This was not the case last night during one of MSNBC flagship programs, “The 11th Hour with Brian Williams”, when Williams invited Jon Meacham and David Maraniss, two men who have won Pulitzer awards for their writing, to discuss the jaw dropping, highly unusual, reality of Trump appointing two justices to the Supreme Court in only eighteen months in office.
In fact, Williams practically constructed the argument and went out of his way to avoid acknowledging that Trump stole a seat on the Supreme Court:
Brian Williams:
John you and David as writers of history, it strikes me your entire business is all about timing. Look back at the last three presidents. Two term presidents … they had two picks over eight years … along comes Donald Trump, he gets two picks right off the bat—eighteen months. And, sooner or later, guys like you are writing about legacy, whatever else happens that defines whatever this presidency is.
By linking Trump’s appointments as “two right off the bat” Williams is misinforming his viewers, for he made no effort to point out that one of those appointments was procured through theft.
Jon Meacham took Williams’ misrepresentation even further when he actually suggested that Trump’s potential two Supreme Court appointees were facilitated through the natural order of rights bestowed on the office of the presidency following an election (wait, what?).
John Meacham:
Absolutely it’s interesting. We know if Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed, we’ll have one justice from the one term president—from George H W Bush; Clarence Thomas, then two from Clinton, two from 43, two from Obama and two from Trump. And, so interestingly, the court itself will reflect the presidential elections of the era.
(emphasis by diarist)
David Maraniss agreed with both of his colleagues without clarifying the record. This was stunning misinformation. Yes, currently, the biggest journalistic story as it relates to the configuration of the Supreme Court is the Republican Party’s theft of a seat on the Court. The LA Times even made note of journalist Matthew Yglesias tweet the day before Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement:
The day before Kennedy announced his retirement, the journalist Matthew Yglesias tweeted: “The theft of Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court seat is legitimately the greatest heist in world history.”
As constitutional lawyer Dawn Johnson, former legal director of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, wrote in Slate last year:
The Republicans effectively have attempted to steal this Supreme Court seat. If this effort succeeds—as has appeared likely ever since Trump’s surprise election—it will create a fundamental imbalance in the third branch of our federal government, the independence and integrity of which is vital to our constitutional system. An essential role of the federal judiciary is to check unlawful actions of the political branches—Congress and the president. When political actors conspire to distort the makeup of the court, as they did in denying President Obama his basic constitutional role, we the people must demand that the balance be restored.
There is disease in the body of the Supreme Court and it cannot be left unchallenged despite the efforts to portray it as business as usual. The Republican Party is determined to roll back the hard fought gains we have made in securing the rights of people across this nation. Silence breeds consent, silence breeds complacency, silence breeds approval, and silence breeds injustice and the falsification of history.