CLAY: Kamala Harris’s approval rating as low as 28%. When Joe Biden took office, the idea was, “He’s the old white guy! He’s going to pass the baton to Kamala Harris. It will be a seamless transition at some point in time. She will become the new standard-bearer of the Democratic Party — a black woman, first woman president, first black woman president.” All these things were going to be remarkable’ it was going to be joyous.
It ain’t working out. Things have gotten so bad that according to a recent Guardian report the Biden White House, Buck, is thinking about putting Kamala Harris on the Supreme Court and as a way to get her out of the vice president’s office — as a way to clear the deck, so to speak, for a new future of the Democratic Party and to fulfill the promise that Joe Biden has already made when he said he’s going to put a black woman on the Supreme Court.
Somehow, that didn’t turn into a big story that he was automatically limiting his selection choices for who was going to be his Supreme Court nominee to a race and to a sex before he even looked at the available options. What odds, Buck Sexton, do you give this of actually happening? Do you think Kamala would accept this nomination? Do you think it’s possible that this happens at all?
BUCK: She’s not qualified. So, start with that, right? There would be quite a Senate confirmation situation here, ’cause she’s just not qualified for that job. I mean, you could talk about, “Oh, she went to law school.” Great. Lot of people went to law school. Doesn’t mean very much.
CLAY: She was the attorney general of California.
BUCK: I was gonna say she was the attorney general of California but she’s never been in a judge role and does not have the kind of knowledge of the law that you would really need to be on the Supreme Court, although, as I sit here and say this all out loud, I think of some of the other people that the Democrats have put forward to the Supreme Court, and it will be interesting. Maybe it will be closer than I think. I think the chance of this is really small because it would be obvious to a lot of people that they’re just trying to side… First of all, the notion of “sidelining” somebody to the Supreme Court is kind of amazing.
CLAY: Lifetime commitment. She’s relatively young. She’d be there 30 or 40 years.
BUCK: I also think that she doesn’t want it. I think that Kamala doesn’t want to be one of nine at the Supreme Court and having her clerks writing her opinions. No, no. I think she wants to be in the game, in the political game in a serious way. I can tell you this much: She’s not convinced that she isn’t gonna be president, not even a little bit.
CLAY: Do you think Biden’s gonna run again? That’s the question, right? Is Biden going to run? I don’t even know exactly when he’s gonna have to make his decision. We’ve talked a lot more about whether Trump is gonna run in 2024 on this show, as a valid reason because it’s a topic of concern that everybody has. We haven’t talked as much about Biden running, because my general presumption was from the moment he took office there’s no way he tries to run in 2024 again. But as Kamala has been such a disaster, I wonder whether they might try and drag Joe across the finish line again, as I keep saying, Weekend at Bernie’s 2 style. If you were betting right now, do you think, Buck, that he runs in 2014? I still don’t think that he is personally.
BUCK: So I’m one of these people who suffers from trying to not make the same error here twice about how ruthless and reckless the Democrats are willing to be if they think something will work. From the very beginning of the Democrat primary for the 2020 election, I was like, “There’s no way it’s gonna be Joe Biden ’cause this guy’s a repeat loser and he’s too old and he’s uninspiring,” and it turned out, of course, no.
I wasn’t the only one, by the way. There were some others, there were hosts at Fox. People were saying it can’t be Joe Biden; that’s a joke. Turns out it was Joe Biden, right? So while we see this once again with Joe Biden if you were to observe this rationally and if you were taking a reason based approach to it, yeah, he’s declining. Yeah, he’s a guy who should not be president now so clearly he shouldn’t run for president again. But if he is their best option at reelection. I can tell you this: I know Democrats believe if Trump runs, they want a replay with Biden. They think that Biden is their best shot.
CLAY: Two white guys is the best shot for them.
BUCK: They think he’s their best shot against Trump. Whether that’s true or not — and people can of course have all sorts of opinons; this is all speculation and we don’t know. But the Democrats that I speak to say if they can do a redo of 2020, because what does that turn into? It turns into the insurrection, it turns into the mean tweets, all this stuff that will be a distraction from Biden’s failed record. But I think that they will run Biden again right now.
I think that is the plan. Because if you’re going to have someone replace Biden, have him step aside for health reasons, why not do it when they have a clear runway of a few years of second term of Biden, you know what I mean? Why not? Now we’re years out, Clay, right? We’re three years away from this decision. What is Biden’s health, and “health” is one way of putting it. Just how does it feel with this guy walking around, muttering things, clearly not always really with it. That doesn’t get better. So in a year or two it may actually be untenable. That’s the only way that I would kind of preface all these things I just said.
CLAY: That’s what I feel as well. But what I would say is we’re not that far away, right? Because let’s presume that Iowa’s gonna start in January of 2024. We’re almost to January of 2022. As soon as the midterms happen, everybody will start to announce by June or July of 2023, right? That will be a late time announcement. When did Biden announce? He announced late before, right, in 2020. He didn’t announce in ’19.
He didn’t announce ’til, like, May, did he? In May of ’19, I think he announced he was running for president. So if he is going to box out everybody else, then this decision is gonna be made within like a year and a half. That’s basically the run-up that we have right now, and even with Biden I think he could push it a little bit later. But to your point, in a year and a half, maybe he’s not so mentally declined that he does try to run, and that would box a lot of other people out.
BUCK: The easy way of pulling this all together analytically is just saying whatever the plan is — whoever has the plan is, whoever really knows it — could very well forcefully change here insofar as you have a Biden who it’s no longer possible to prop him up. It’s no longer possible for the media to get away with acting like this guy has the energy, the mental acuity and sharpness necessary for the job.
It could be a rapid deterioration the next year or so. By the way, I didn’t wish this on anybody and I hope that any politician any president enjoys as long health and as healthy as run as humanly possible. But the point here being that whatever the plan is right now, the plans could very well change. The real issue for why the Kamala discussion’s even happening… Do you think…? I give that a 10% shot. You ask me for a permission, I think it’s a one in 10 shot that they go — you know, those are not odds that would keep me up at night.
CLAY: She would have to advocate for it. It would have to be a recognition by her that her political future is not gonna be found in the presidency, right? That she’s never gonna be elected president. I’m with you in that I just don’t see her being willing to acknowledge that.
BUCK: The president right now, though, is a guy who lost over and over, who was weak in the polls, right?
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: So she sees it. I think of the kind of people we’re talking about here when you’re looking at, you know, Biden and Kamala and the top of the Democrat power apparatus, they are in love with themselves. They think that they are part of moving American history in the right direct and all this stuff. They really believe that they, meaning anybody who’s — and it’s true on the Republican side too, by the way. Let’s be fair, right?
Anyone at this level of politics has at some stage or some level of belief that they’re really special. And I can tell you this: Kamala definitely has it and definitely believes that she can be president, that the polls aren’t representative. She’s the vice president. It doesn’t matter if she took her case to the American people. So I just bring that up because she won’t step down. Supreme Court? How often do you hear about Kagan or Sotomayor on a day-to-day basis, for example, just to pick two Supreme Court justices appointed by Democrats? How often do you hear about them?
CLAY: Not very often. And the other thing I would say from a legal perspective, Buck, is most of the time on the Supreme Court, you absolutely love the nuance, technicality, majesty of the law. There are people out there who truly love the law. I was not one of them. I loved being in law school. I didn’t like the idea of being a clerk or studying the law or the intricacies of it. I never got the idea that Kamala does either. I think that factors in a big way as well.