Beg Your Pardon, Susan Collins?

It's your Sunday show rundown!

Earlier this week, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer informed President Joe Biden of his coming retirement in June. Thus begins another SCOTUS confirmation and the return of ... The Ghouls of SCOTUS Nominations Past!

ABC's "This Week"

Maine's Senator Susan Collins, fresh from showing her doorknob collection to her niece Samantha , decided to try to set up her excuse for her eventual "NO" vote on the very qualified yet still to be determined SCOTUS nominee.

After giving empty platitudes, Collins proceeded to pull bullshit reasons out of nowhere for why she will object to this nomination.

COLLINS: [...] But the way that the president has handled this nomination has been clumsy at best. It adds to the further perception that the court is a political institution like Congress when it is not supposed to be.

Appointments to the Supreme Court are NOT political? We beg to differ, Susan . As George Stephanopoulos pointed out to Collins, Ronald Reagan said he would appoint a woman before he selected Sandra Day O'Connor and Trump announced he would pick a woman within hours of RBG's passing. Biden announcing he would select a Black woman to fill a SCOTUS vacancy, whether as president or candidate, is no different. But Collins continued trying to insist otherwise.

COLLINS: Actually, this isn't exactly the same. I’ve looked at what was done in both cases. And what President Biden did was as a candidate, make this pledge. And that helped politicize the entire nomination process.

Funny, Susan Collins's research failed to mention that Reagan announced he would pick a woman for SCOTUS while he was a candidate , similar to Biden. It astounds me the levels of research GOP politicians will do to find arcane reasons to do what they wish while telling lies easily debunked by historians or anyone with basic Google skills.

But the most disturbing moment is when Stephanopoulos asks Collins about Trump floating potential pardons if he is re-elected for his failed insurrection pawns.

COLLINS: Well, we're a long ways from 2024. But let me say this, I do not think the president should have made — that President Trump should have made that pledge to do pardons. We should let the judicial process proceed.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say we're a long way away from —

COLLINS: January 6th was a dark day in our history.

STEPHANOPOULOS: It was. And you voted to convict President Trump as well. Why can't you rule out supporting him in 2024?

COLLINS: Well, certainly it's not likely given the many other qualified candidates that we have that have expressed interest in running. So it's very unlikely.

 As "unlikely" as Brett Kavanaugh voting to overturn Roe v Wade ? Collins voted to impeach and convict Trump in his second impeachment, which would have made him ineligible to run for federal office ever again if we lived in a proper democracy, but couldn't muster the vaguest attempt to shut the door on endorsing Trump in 2024. Collins will fall in line, like those "other qualified candidates" if Trump announces he's running.

CBS's "Face The Nation"

 Political remora and US Senator Lindsey Graham gave a very different answer than Collins when asked the same question about Biden's potential SCOTUS nominee.

GRAHAM: Well, it's not different to me. Put me in the camp of making sure the court and other institutions look like America.

Well...um...that sounds reasonable and great! I'm sure Graham didn't fuck that up a nanosecond later...

GRAHAM: [...] You know, we make a real effort as Republicans to recruit women and people of color to make the party look more like America. Affirmative action is picking somebody not as well qualified for past wrongs. [...]

Oh for fuck's sake! "Making institutions look like America" is what affirmative action does .

But when Graham was asked about Trump's pardon-dangling, he gave a more forceful answer than Collins. He said he didn't want to give the impression it was okay to defile the Capitol or incentivize future insurrectionists. Which sounded good on paper until ...

GRAHAM: Kamala Harris- Yeah. Well, I think it's inappropriate. I- I don't want to reinforce that defiling the Capitol was OK. I don't want to do anything that would make this more likely in the future. And just let me finish my thought here. When Kamala Harris and her associates and the people that work for her, her staffers, raised money to bail out the rioters who hit cops in the head and burned down stores. I didn't like that either. So I don't want to do anything from raising bail to pardoning people who take the law into their own hands because it will make more violence more likely.

Vice President Kamala Harris was not and is not President. BLM did not try to overturn the government. Police instigated violence at protests. This is not the same thing in any way.

Fox News Sunday

We'll end this week on a great moment of pushback on former Press Secretary Dana Perino and Fox's made-up war on "wokeness":

"I think a lot of it is driving a stake through a strawman" -- Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby on Fox News' concerns about "wokeness" in the militarypic.twitter.com/fWc9tMM0b8

— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1643553660 

Driving stakes through strawmen is the entire GOP platform.

Have a week.

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