It's day 74 of this nauseating roller coaster of an administration.
Shockingly, even Joe and Mika admitted, right off the bat on Morning Joe, that Trump is acting rather nuts. Somehow, they still manage to heap unwarrented praise upon him and other Republicans? Mark Halperin addressed the heated Gorsuch battle for Senate confirmation and Trump's recent failures.
HALPERIN: The glass half empty part of the story: low approval ratings. Failure of health care initiative. Disarray within a lot of government and a lot of tension. No clear ability to move forward.
Glass half full and probably not half, but full part of glass....People are willing to give him a chance. They're not as impatient as Washington. Huge week. Can he get Gorsuch through? Big foreign policy week.
SCARBOROUGH: Hold on a second. Mitch McConnell will get Gorsuch through.. Conservatives are going to see that as his accomplishment, for good reason and not Donald Trump's.
HALPERIN: Can he (Trump) get Gorsuch through in a way he gets credit?
End scene.
They move on to other topics, without mentioning the egregious problems associated with this particular SCOTUS nominee. Those issues are threefold: First of all, Sen. McConnell will be invoking the nuclear option to confirm Gorsuch, secondly, Sen. McConnell unfairly denied President Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland even a hearing. The third and most important reason this nomination should not proceed as 'normal:' Shouldn't we consider the fact that Donald Trump is under FEDERAL INVESTIGATION for colluding with a foreign power to fix our elections?
OOPS! Those little details aren't terribly important, not to Scarborough and his pals.
If McConnell uses the 'nuclear option,' he will nullify the rule of a 60 vote minimum required for SCOTUS confirmation in the Senate. Naturally, some blame the Democrats for this, but the example they are referencing wasn't quite the same.
The nuclear option was first invoked by Harry Reid, but only for cabinet appointments, not for lifetime Supreme Court appointments. This was due to the unprecedented obstructionism by Republicans which prevented President Obama from filling critical D.O.J. positions.
Now, every both-sides-do-it newscaster is very quick to label the Democratic opposition to this far-right replacement of Justice Scalia as "Democratic Obstructionism." Boy, they are just itching to both sides do it this nomination, aren't they?
The most appalling aspect of this is that we don't know if Trump or his team won the election by colluding with the Russian government. He is still allowed to appoint a lifetime SCOTUS nominee while under FBI investigation? Imagine if this were POTUS Hillary. You can't imagine that, she's a Democrat.
IOKIYAR,. that's why it's okay.
One has to wonder if a Democratic President will ever be able to make a SCOTUS appointment ever again. The Republican Party seems perfectly okay with stealing nominations. And with helpers like Morning Joe elevating a thief like Mitch McConnell to hero status, we may be permanently screwed.
