Rebuking Supreme Court Justice-nominee Brett Kavanaugh as too "extreme" to the "far right," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the nominee's confirmation will give President Donald Trump power to "overreach."
"The nominee is pretty far over," Schumer told "The Cats Roundtable" on 970 AM-N.Y. "He presents himself as a family man and a basketball coach, and all of that, [but] his views are quite far out there."
Pointing to President Trump's campaign rhetoric and pre-election list of 25 Supreme Court candidates "all very far to one side," Schumer told host John Catsimatidis he fears Kavanaugh is a power play for a presidential administration under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.
"But with a president who seems to want to overreach in terms of his power, Kavanaugh, of the list of 25, was the one who is most willing to allow a president to overreach," Schumer told Catsimatidis. "He said a president should never be investigated or subpoenaed in some of his writings. That's wrong. We have rule of law."
Schumer, who is a leader of Democrat's "resistance" to President Trump, is unlikely to approve a Supreme Court nominee from this president under any circumstances, but he told Catsimatidis his three criteria are excellence, moderation, and diversity – of which Kavanaugh falls short on the latter two, he said.
"On the Supreme Court, unfortunately, there hasn't been much bipartisanship," Schumer said.
". . . The president nominated somebody from a list of 25 that were all very far to one side. The president's list were people who would repeal Roe v Wade.
". . . If the American people truly believe that Kavanaugh would overturn Roe and undo healthcare, there will be a bipartisan majority, Democrats and Republicans, to defeat him. Whether the hearings prove that sufficiently to people, we will see. I hope they do. I believe that, given what the president has said about his choices, that both those things are true."
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