- Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer walked back his Wednesday warning to two Supreme Court justices that “they have released the whirlwind” and they “will pay the price.”
- “I should not have used the words I used yesterday,” Schumer said Thursday.
- His comments come after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell condemned Schumer’s remarks on the House floor.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer walked back his Wednesday warning to Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, saying his words didn’t come out the way he intended them to.
The senate minority leader noted Thursday on the House floor, “I should not have used the words I used yesterday.”
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“They didn’t come out the way I intended to,” Schumer said. “My point was that there would be political consequences — political consequences for President Trump and Senate Republicans if the Supreme Court, with the newly confirmed justices, stripped away a woman’s right to choose.”
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“Of course I didn’t intend to suggest anything other than political and public opinion consequences for the Supreme Court and it is a gross distortion to imply otherwise,” the New York senator added.
“I am from Brooklyn. We speak in strong language. I shouldn’t have used the words I did but in no way was I making a threat. I never, never would do such a thing,” Schumer said, adding that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “knows that” and that “Republicans who are busy manufacturing outrage over these comments know that, too.”
“Now, what will remain long after the clamor over my comments dies down is the issue at hand, a woman’s constitutional right to choose and Republican attempts to invalidate it,” he added. “ The fact that my Republican colleagues have worked systematically over the course of decades to install the judicial infrastructure to take down Roe v. Wade and do very real damage to the country and to the American way of life. That is the issue that will remain.“
His words come after McConnell condemned Schumer’s Wednesday remarks at an abortion rally as the Supreme Court heard the abortion case, June Medical Services v. Russo. (RELATED: ‘Maybe You Shouldn’t Even Want To Have Sex With Me’: Tlaib Rants About Sex At DC Abortion Rally)
“Democrats are trying to cloak their anger at President Trump in rhetoric about protecting norms and institutions,” McConnell said. “But in reality, it is their own side of the aisle where anti-institutionalism is rampant.”
“We talk about attacks on the official of the presidency,” he said. “On the electoral college, on the First Amendment, on the Senate itself. But most striking of all have been the shameless efforts to bully our nation’s independent judiciary, and yesterday those efforts took a dangerous and disturbing turn.”
McConnell noted that this attack “was not some isolated incident.”
“The left-wing campaign against the federal judiciary did not begin yesterday, not yesterday,” he said, reminding his colleagues that during the impeachment trial of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Warren and others attacked Chief Justice Roberts for “staying neutral instead of delivering the outcomes that they wanted.”
“These same groups came to senator Schumer’s defense yesterday with attacks against the Chief Justice for condemning the threats against his colleagues,” McConnell added. “And last summer, a number of Senate Democrats sent a brief to the Supreme Court threatening to inflict institutional change on the Court if it did not rule the way the Democrats wanted.”
“In other words, give us the ruling we want, or we’ll change the numbers of the court,” McConnell explained.
“Here is what they wrote,” he added. “The Supreme Court is not well. Really? The Supreme Court is not well. Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be restructured. Now what that means is you rule the way we want, or we will expand the numbers. And change the outcome. A political threat plain as day.”
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