Come On the Show and Defend These Votes, Senator Romney

CLAY: As we start the third hour here, there will soon be an official vote to put Ketanji Brown Jackson on the Supreme Court to replace Justice Stephen Breyer. That is going to happen, it appears, within this hour, and the vote will be 53 to 47 with three Republicans joining every Democrat to vote in support of her nomination. Susan Collins, Republican of Maine — we talked about this earlier in the week, Buck.

I don’t have an issue with Susan Collins’ decision because she has staked out the principle that you should defer to the president when it comes to his choice for the Supreme Court. Same position she took with Brett Kavanaugh, with Amy Coney Barrett, with prior Democratic nominations, and now with Ketanji Brown Jackson. You can disagree with that. I actually think Susan Collins has proven that that is her principle, and I respect her for standing on it.

Lisa Murkowski out of Alaska, who is up for reelection this year — and, Buck, Alaska has an interesting ranked-choice voting process, which makes me believe that this is a directly political decision by Lisa Murkowski. I find in terms of the Supreme Court her decision not to vote for Brett Kavanaugh to be such a bad choice that I personally if I lived in Alaska would not vote for her for the Senate because she got it, in my opinion, 100% wrong on Brett Kavanaugh.

BUCK: Unforgivable. Unforgivable. Sorry.

CLAY: No, no. You’re right, which is why I’m not inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt on this decision. But the guy that is making the worst choice — the person who has, I believe, become an embarrassment to the state of Utah that he represents — is Mitt Romney. And we went off on him a couple of days ago, but I’m still fired up about it, Buck, because not only is he voting for Ketanji Brown Jackson, he voted against the removal of the mask mandate.

He declined to vote on whether or not Joe Biden should be able to put in place a vaccine mandate — and this is so incredibly significant, Buck — he voted against Ketanji Brown Jackson for a prior judicial appointment, and now he’s supporting her for the Supreme Court, which makes no sense. He didn’t think she was entitled to sit on the federal judiciary for a much less significant role, and now he thinks she is for a more significant role! It’s nonsensical.

BUCK: You remember one of the really tough moments for John Kerry when he was running for president was, “Well, I voted for the Iraq war before I was against it.” You know, he had that whole line.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And then you had people at the pro-Bush rallies, saying, “Flip-flop, flip-flop. ” That became — and I remember the media tried to say… It was John Kerry tried to say that we need to have more nuance and then everybody started saying that “nuance” was just a fancy French word for flip-flop. It was great. Like flip-flop was… I think people were actually carrying them around too at some of these rallies. This is Mitt Romney doing essentially the same thing. He was against Ketanji Brown Jackson’s elevation to the federal bench before he was for it or yes, against it before he… I can’t even keep it straight.

CLAY: He was against it. Now he’s for it.

BUCK: Now he’s for it. Thank you. He’s against it. Now he’s for it.

CLAY: That’s the opposite of what Lindsey Graham did and some people have been in the left-wing press critical of Lindsey Graham. But let me say this. I actually understand that on some level because you can say, “Well, for a relatively low-level judicial appointment, I’m willing to give her a chance to see how she does,” and then based on what her record is you now believe she’s not entitled to get a promotion to the Supreme Court. That is easier to understand for me than she doesn’t deserve the low-level job but now she deserves the high-level job.

BUCK: There’s a logical consistency at play there that, yes, I think it’s also more political. We’re gonna be realistic and honest with everybody always. Yes, I think it’s more politics than, you know, Lindsey Graham is saying, “Well, at that level, the federal bench is…”

CLAY: It’s easier to defend that trajectory than the one Romney took.

BUCK: The Romney defense is absurd. The Mitt Romney defense makes me just… I still sit here saying, “I can’t believe this guy was the Republican nominee,” and he was. But then you think, well, he was the governor of Massachusetts and then he moved to like a $50 million mansion on the beach of San Diego and now he’s the senator from Utah. I will say, though, one thing that we do I think pretty well is we hold — we try to hold — the right to account here when necessary.

I like to think of it like we’re coaches, right? We want to win the game, but you’ve coached; I’ve coached. Sometimes you gotta tell the team, you know, get your stuff together, boys, you gotta get out there and you gotta do a better job, right? On the other side of this, though, we should point out, that’s the Mitt Romney aspect of this. Republicans were… First of all, a lot of people are voting against Ketanji Brown Jackson. They don’t care they’re gonna be called racist for this.

CLAY: The left well, yeah.

BUCK: They don’t care, but more importantly — ’cause that’s just nonsense. But more importantly, they really asked some questions and they decided that they were going to give a real confirmation hearing. In this era of hyper-politicized Supreme Court appointments, Republicans didn’t entirely roll over. I will say, a little bit of a surprise to me, actually, the fact that they really pushed.

The issue of being soft on child pornography sentences really did get a national conversation here about this justice. Ted Cruz was very vocal — among others, Josh Hawley and others — about how she may be the most left-wing, activist judge of all time. I do think it’s really hard to get more left wing than Sotomayor but let’s just say it’s at least possible.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: So the Republicans, they didn’t have it the votes so it’s gonna be easy. They’re not gonna be making a deciding vote one way or the other, but they made some noise on this one. They actually put up something of a fight. Maybe it was just optics, but at least they didn’t roll over.

CLAY: What about Marsha Blackburn’s “What is a woman?” question, which, to me, crystallized how illegitimate the conversation has become as it pertains to transgender activism in so many different levels. But I also want to give Mitt Romney a chance to explain himself on this vote.

BUCK: Should we invite him on the show, Clay? Should we invite him on? Everyone listening, you guys cannot change the dial if we have Mitt Romney on to explain himself, all right? That’s the deal.

CLAY: If Mitt Romney wants to come on and defend the last three votes that I all disagree with — and I bet, Buck, a lot of our audience disagrees certainly with the mask mandate vote as it pertains —

BUCK: Our phone calls lit up like a Christmas tree on Monday.

CLAY: Yeah. The fact that he also voted to decline to show up — I don’t know what his excuse was, but declined to show up — to vote against Biden’s vaccine mandate. And now he’s going to vote in favor of Ketanji Brown Jackson after first being against it. Here is Mitt Romney explaining his John Kerry flip-flop-like decision.

ROMNEY: In the prior confirmation, was concerned that she was outside the mainstream. And as a result of our meeting for an hour together and reviewing her testimony before Congress, I became convinced that she’s within the mainstream. She’s also highly qualified, intelligent, a capable person, and I wish her the very best.

CLAY: Okay. So all this says to me is — and I’m saying this as a lawyer, all right? Mitt Romney did not do his homework on the first vote when he opposed her, because that’s really what this tells me. He’s saying, “Oh…” First of all, you talked to her for an hour? I’m sorry. You’re giving her a lifetime appointment? If you can’t do a decent job of being a likable person in a one-hour meeting, you are, first of all, probably socially maladroit on many different levels.

But to say, “Oh, I talked to her for an hour.” Well, Mitt Romney, to my knowledge, is not a legal scholar. So what kind of conversation is he having? It’s not like he’s probing in a sophisticated way her understanding of the Constitution. And, again, he said, “I now believe she’s in the mainstream.” So you thought she wasn’t in the mainstream, her opinions are certainly not in the mainstream, and then you change your mind and decide to vote for her?

So either you did a shoddy job in your initial vetting of her when you voted against her or you are doing a shoddy job now because there should be some consistency in your opinion of her as a jurist given that you are now promoting her to lifetime tenure and giving her the greatest job — in terms of influence — that a lawyer can have in this country. So I’d love for Mitt Romney to come on this show and attempt to explain all three of those votes because I think our audience would like to hear, particularly because, Buck, we’re number one in Salt Lake City, and I imagine a lot of his constituents are listening right now.

BUCK: Tucker on his show earlier in the week was also calling out the governor, I believe Governor Cox of Utah for —

BUCK: Transgender. You’ve had a number of people. You had the governor of South Dakota say she would sign something about transgender sports and then did not. You have, I think, the governor of Mississippi —

CLAY: Kentucky.

BUCK: — or is it Arkansas? One of those.

CLAY: Arkansas. It was Arkansas went against it.

BUCK: The governor of Arkansas went against it. Sorry, Mississippi. My bad. Governor Mississippi.

CLAY: (laughs) We had the governor of Mississippi on. He’s probably listening right now, like, why, “Why you throwing me under the bus?”

BUCK: But now the governor of Utah also, and then was overridden by the state legislature, right?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: So it is important that people what actually happens in some of these states where you think it would just be, ’cause here’s the thing: You never get this… I have to point this out. Blue states, Gavin Newsom or… I was gonna say Cuomo. Cuomo. But it’s actually Hochul.

CLAY: Your girl Hochul.

BUCK: Thank you. My own state governor. Blanked on her name. I still think of Cuomo as the governor.

CLAY: By the way, she may have some trouble in your state. Have you seen some of the poll numbers coming out? Like, there’s some Republican support. She doesn’t have, it doesn’t seem like, a lot of support right now in the Democrat Party.

BUCK: I would hope that Democrats, even Democrats in New York City at some level recognize that, like, ruining the state is a bad idea. Just put aside the politics.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Causing hundreds of thousands of people to flee in terror at your awful policies. Maybe you want to change that around. Call me crazy. But going back to the initial point out here, Clay, you never get governors in deep blue states going against their base and either vetoing or signing or whatever legislation that enrages Democrats.

But somehow Republican governors — and this is, by the way, corporate interests. What this is just bending to corporate interests within their state, primarily, and also the donor class but those things are obviously very much tied together. Yeah, even Republican governors, they like to be invited to the fancy clubs and get the big checks for their campaigns.

CLAY: It’s why you need people who just really don’t care? I mean, I hate to say it, but stand up for what you believe in — and if people disagree, so what? I just don’t understand what you care, right? Like, if people decide they hate me because of my political opinion and they don’t want to hang out with me, that just makes my life easier, right? If there’s fewer people who want to hang out with me, I’ll hang out with the people who like me the most.

I just don’t understand this. And, by the way, the state of Kentucky, the governor who’s a Democrat… Overwhelmingly the Kentucky legislature passed a bill to require high school athletes to compete against their birth certificate sex. Boys compete against boys; girls compete against girls. The fact that they even have to pass this bill is crazy to me. The Kentucky governor vetoed it too.

Now, he’s a Democrat, but the governor of governor of Kentucky being a Democrat, he’s actually closer to a Republican than some Republicans are, right? I mean, he is as far to the right as you could be. It’s just… I know there’s a lot of people in Kentucky fired up about this and I expect the legislature which passed it on a bipartisan basis is gonna overrule him, too. But the fact that it happened in Utah, the fact that it’s happened anywhere else — that a Republican governor would not sign this bill — is, I believe, an embarrassment given what’s going on right now.