MSNBC guest Elie Mystal, who also serves as justice correspondent at The Nation, said on Saturday that the hardest part of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s hearings — for her — would likely be refraining from punching Republicans in the mouth.
Mystal joined host Tiffany Cross on “The Cross Connection,” where he argued that Jackson’s credentials were impeccable and the only things any Republicans had against her were “racism and disgusting innuendo.”
As Mediaite reported, Cross began the segment by asking Mystal what he expected to come out of the hearings, scheduled to start Monday — and she suggested that what Republicans were angling for was a “viral moment” that they could use to smear Judge Jackson in the court of public opinion.
“I’m curious, Elie, what do you anticipate to come out of these hearings? Because you know, they’re going to be vying for a viral moment on the Republican side,” Cross said. “And what would you say is the biggest challenge to Judge Jackson’s confirmation, if any, given that Democrats have the majority?”
“The biggest challenge is her not getting out of her chair and punching one of these fools in the mouth,” Mystal said of the Republicans who were likely to challenge her. “Like, that’s the hardest thing, because all they have for her right now is racism and disgusting innuendo. Like, they don’t have… They don’t have anything on her record.”
Mystal went on to note that Judge Jackson had been on the court for nine years, arguing that Republicans were not contesting her decisions in “hundreds and hundreds of cases” and were not making “substantive legal arguments about her actual decision-making process.”
“All they’ve got is the racism, they want to know about the LSAT scores. Some of them are going to call her an affirmative action nominee,” Mystal continued, referencing criticisms directed primarily at President Joe Biden for his outright statement that he was going to choose a black woman, to the exclusion of all other demographics. “Some of them are going to ask her why she’s not sad that good white people weren’t considered for the job. That’s literally what they have.”
Mystal then pivoted to address Senator Josh Hawley, who raised questions earlier in the week about Jackson’s record in dealing with child pornography and sex offender cases.
“But like, that’s, the challenge will just be keeping her cool because if she keeps her cool, which I’m sure she will do,” Mystal concluded. “We’re talking about a high school debate champion and, you know, a person who has prepared her whole life for these four days. As long as she keeps her cool, she should do fine because she’s so eminently qualified and impeccably credentialed that they don’t really have anything on her.”
The White House has responded to Hawley’s accusations, saying, that they amounted to “toxic and weakly-presented misinformation that relies on taking cherry-picked elements of her record out of context.”