On Wednesday night, Senator Ted Cruz gave a blunt reply when asked if he intended to vote for the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, answering bluntly, “No.”
Cruz appeared on Fox News with host Jesse Watters, whose preamble to interviewing Cruz showed the historical vitriol directed at GOP Supreme Court nominees by Senate Democrats at the nominees’ confirmation hearings.
Then Watters played a clip of Cruz asking Jackson, “I’m an Hispanic man. Could I decide I was an Asian man? Would I have the ability to be an Asian man …?”
Jackson responded, “Senator, I’m not able to answer your question. You’re asking me about hypotheticals …”
Watters asked Cruz, “If you can’t answer a question, like, I don’t know, ‘Can you just make up your race?’ or ‘What’s the definition of a woman?’ do think she has what it takes to be a Supreme Court Justice?”
“Well, listen, she’s probably the first Supreme Court nominee in the history of our country who is unable to answer the question ‘What is a woman?’” Cruz answered.
“Her record, unfortunately I think, is far outside the mainstream, and there’s a real difference,” he continued. “You played clips of the Democrats sliming Republican nominees, going personal, going into the gutter, going after their character; if you look at the hearing the last two days, the questions that Republicans have been focused on were her record, and in particular her judicial record.”
“If you look at her record as a federal judge in criminal cases, and particularly cases involving child pornography, over and over and over again she gives incredibly lenient sentences,” Cruz charged. “In every single case where she had discretion in a child pornography case, she gave dramatically lower sentences than the sentencing guidelines provide for and then the prosecutor asked for.”
“One of the most egregious cases was a case, the Hawkins case, where you had a defendant who had graphic videos of little boys, eleven years old, ten years old, as young as eight years old, being violently sexually assaulted by adult males, and she gave that defendant a slap on the wrist of three months in jail,” Cruz noted. “The guidelines provided for ten years; the prosecutors wanted a long, long sentence and she gave that defendant three months.”
“I think the American people are concerned whether they will have a Supreme Court Justice that’s going to follow the law or we’re going to have a Supreme Court Justice that is looking for loopholes to let violent criminals out of jail,” Cruz asserted. “I gotta say, her answers and her record in this regard were really concerning.”
“Are you going to vote for her?” Watters asked bluntly.
“No,” Cruz said succinctly,
“Do you think a lot of your Republican colleagues are going to vote for her?” Watters asked.
“I don’t know; I think the overwhelming majority of Republicans will vote against her,” Cruz surmised. “I think her record is far out of the mainstream. You may see a couple of Republicans vote for her.”