GLENN: Yesterday -- last night, I tweeted this out because I think it's important audio for you to hear with Chuck Todd and Chuck Schumer, to show you how unhinged the Democrats are. It's just -- it's ridiculous what they're doing to the Supreme Court nominee. But I also want you to hear Chuck Todd actually punching the clock and showing the rest of journalists what it's like to be a journalist.
CHUCK: You expressed regret earlier this year for the rules change that was made on judges in 2013. Why did you go along with it if you regret doing it?
SCHUMER: Well, let's look at the history. Our Republican colleagues had been holding back on just about all of so many lower court judges, including very important DC circuit. I went to Lamar Alexander, one of my dear friends in the Senate, and I said, "Look, if you keep holding back on scores and scores of judges, my side is going to want to change the rules. Go to Mitch and tell him. At least let us have some votes on a few of these, many of whom had gotten bipartisan support."
The answer was no. And we changed the rules. But the one thing that stands out here, Chuck, is we did not change it for Supreme Court for one very important reason: And that is, on -- on the most important of decisions, 60 votes is called for. That's why you go to mainstream, that's how you get a mainstream justice.
PAT: Can you believe the hair he's splitting here? That they changed the rules. Sure, but we didn't do it on the Supreme Court. That's just because there was no Supreme Court justice coming up for a vote at that time.
STU: That they needed the help for --
PAT: Right. Right.
STU: They didn't need it.
PAT: They didn't need to do that.
STU: You know why? Because Republicans, too many of them, by the way, did not oppose, Kagan or Sotomayor.
PAT: Yes. They just caved.
Sotomayor is not mainstream. Kagan was not mainstream. But he wants a mainstream justice.
SCHUMER: Just about every -- Mitch calls it a filibuster. We call it the 60-vote standard. Most Americans believe in the 60-vote standard.
CHUCK: But, Senator -- that's fine. But there is no rule that says that it has to be 60 votes. There's no part of advice and consensus that says it has to be 60 votes. And, in fact, there's currently two members of the Supreme Court right now that did not get 60 votes: Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas.
SCHUMER: Well, actually Clarence Thomas is the only one. Because when the filibuster came up with Alito, there were 72 votes to go forward. So there was just one. Just about every nominee gets 60 votes because in the past, presidents actually consulted the other side before picking someone.
PAT: What a bald-faced lie. That is such garbage. Like Barack Obama went to conservatives and said, "Hey, who would you like me to appoint?"
GLENN: Sotomayor.
PAT: Sonia Sotomayor. You like her? Yeah, me too. So -- come on.
STU: By the way, according to the New York Times, Sotomayor is to the left of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
PAT: Right. She's not --
STU: She's mainstream. She is the most --
PAT: So bad.
STU: He actually has the balls in this clip to actually cite the exact thing I'm talking about. Because he says, well, the New York Times said he would be the second most conservative justice, Justice Clarence Thomas. He actually says that in the story. That same article says the most liberal justice on the Supreme Court is Sonia Sotomayor to the left of Ginsburg.
PAT: Jeez, man. And that's hard to believe. It's hard to believe anybody could be that -- what is -- the only thing left of Sotomayor is Joe Stalin. And he's gone. He's gone.
GLENN: We lost him.
VOICE: In this case, Donald Trump consulted the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist society, hard right groups with extreme special interest-oriented views. And it didn't leave much chance for compromise.
PAT: My gosh.
VOICE: You know, Heidi Heitkamp, one of the Democratic senators in your conference, she came out in favor of Neil Gorsuch and in favor of cloture. She said she's not happy about it. She didn't like the way Merrick Garland was treated. But she ended her statement by essentially saying, two wrongs don't make a right. Why not give Neil Gorsuch an up or down vote, Senator Schumer?
VOICE: Let me make a proposal to maybe break the problem that we have.
PAT: I'm sure this will be reasonable.
GLENN: Okay.
VOICE: It looks like Gorsuch will not reach the 60-vote margin. So instead of changing the rules, which is up to Mitch McConnell and the Republican majority, why doesn't President Trump, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, sit down and try to come up with a mainstream nominee?
PAT: And finally come up with a nominee that I like? Why don't they do that? How about I just tell Trump who to nominate?
GLENN: Yeah, we did this with Sotomayor.
PAT: Sotomayor. Yeah, oh, they did that.
GLENN: They did.
VOICE: Look, when a nominee doesn't get 60 votes, you shouldn't change the rules. You should change the nominee, and let's just take one minute here --
PAT: The hypocrisy is unbelievable.
VOICE: -- because this is important. Let's just look at the history. Okay?
PAT: Okay.
VOICE: Our nominee was Merrick Garland. Mitch McConnell broke 230 years of precedent and didn't call him up for a vote. It wasn't in the middle of an election campaign. It was March.
PAT: Which is the middle of the election.
VOICE: Second, now it looks like we have the votes to prevent Gorsuch from getting on.
Now, that -- that doesn't mean you have to change the rules.
PAT: Yeah, it does.
VOICE: Each side didn't get their nominee. Let's sit down and come together.
GLENN: You got your nominee.
VOICE: Our Republican friends are acting like, you know, they're a cat on the top of a tree.
PAT: They expected -- what they're saying about the Merrick Garland thing is that they expected a hard-core conservative to be replaced with a liberal. And, of course, the Republicans weren't going to bring that up for a vote. Of course not. Come on.
GLENN: And it was in the middle of an election.
PAT: Yes, it was.
GLENN: I remember tweeting, this may change the course of the election.
PAT: You can't allow that to swing the entire court in the direction of the left-wing.
GLENN: No.
PAT: I mean, that would be -- that would have been a horrible, horrible move.
STU: And this is -- you want to talk about a good argument for Gorsuch, what you're seeing here from Chuck Schumer is, he knows he's not getting a liberal. What he wants is someone he thinks he can win later. The Kennedys of the world. I always think of Briar, but the other guy that was in New Hampshire.
PAT: Souter.
STU: He wants a Souter, right? He's hoping he can get someone who looks kind of conservative at the beginning, but you're not really sure. Then you can win him over on big things. Roberts, you can win him over on certain issues. And he doesn't think he has that in Gorsuch, which is a positive, by the way.
PAT: Yeah.
STU: A very big positive.
PAT: This is why Gorsuch should be hammered through no matter what. Change the rule and just get it done.
JEFFY: Yes.
PAT: Get, what? Fifty-four votes now. And that's -- so, what? It's not 60. Like Chuck Todd said, no rule says you have to have 60. There's no law.
STU: And we all know this standard is going away. Because if it doesn't go away here, if they don't do it with Gorsuch, the next person who comes up is going to do it. Whether it's Democratic or a Republican president, the next justice that comes up is going to slam these guys through with 50 votes no matter what.
GLENN: Boy, I hope they do. I hope they do.
STU: Because this standard is dead. It's dead. So I think, so far, the initial idea with Democrats was, let's not do it to Gorsuch when they have an obviously good nominee. Let's wait for the next one. We can really vilify them. Because that's going to be the balance of the court. We can vilify them. Really go after it. And we'll have credibility, because we let Gorsuch go through. Now, I think with the health care failure, they're feeling a little momentum. They're thinking they might as well just go for this now.
GLENN: Wrong move -- wrong move strategically, I think. Wrong move strategically.
PAT: And he keeps saying that Gorsuch is not mainstream. Nobody could have been more reasonable --
STU: Yeah.
PAT: During a hearing, than Neil Gorsuch was. He was absolutely mainstream. He sounded completely unbiased on many issues. He actually said Roe v. Wade was settled law, along with the gay marriage thing. I mean, almost everything the Democrats would want, he said, yeah, it's settled.
STU: He said if Trump asked him how he would rule on Roe vs. Wade during the interview, he would have walked out of the room. Now, of course, Trump promised that he would ask his nominees that questions. So apparently he didn't do that.
PAT: He should. The Democrats certainly do.
STU: Yeah, I honestly have no problem -- everyone makes that out to be, oh, how dare you. Well, isn't that, I don't know, a fundamental question you should know about your justice?
PAT: Yes, yes.
STU: We're like -- we're supposed to play this weird telepathic game with these guys.
GLENN: What they're saying is trying to appeal to, you know, their sense of reason and independent-minded action for the specific case. But I can't think of the case where it overturns Roe vs. Wade that doesn't involve the choice, is this a blob of tissue, or is it a child?
STU: Well, privacy. I mean, they try to find indicators, right? Gorsuch has never had a ruling on abortion. He has had -- he did write a book about euthanasia. He is shown to be very favorable towards issues that would indicate --
PAT: Does he not like senior citizens in Asia, what's the deal?
STU: Yeah, no, it's true. It's a different thing. But, yes, he does not like citizens? Citizens in Asia. That's just separate.
PAT: That's weird.
STU: But every indication is that he will be very good on this issue.
PAT: Yeah, but you don't know for sure. And you would ask. Because certainly Barack Obama asked Sonia Sotomayor and Kagan if they were in favor of abortion or not. You know that happened.
STU: I mean, maybe it was so obvious, he didn't to have ask.
JEFFY: Didn't have to.
STU: Not much of a debate on that one.
PAT: Never would a Democrat nominate a Supreme Court justice who wasn't pro-choice.
GLENN: Never.
PAT: You know that wouldn't happen. Would not happen.
So this little game Schumer is trying to play is asinine.
GLENN: Is there anymore left?
PAT: Yeah, there's some more.
VOICE: And they have to jump off with all the damage that entails. Come back off the tree, sit down, and work with us, and we will produce a mainstream nominee. It will be -- one more point. One more point.
VOICE: Hang on here.
VOICE: It will be a Republican nominee. But, remember, Democrats voted for Roberts and Alito. And both of them got the 60 votes.
VOICE: All right. But there are already two Democrats for Neil Gorsuch. So there already is a bipartisan majority -- and, look, two is two. It's more than zero, for what it's worth.
But why should senator McConnell work with you guys on this when you changed the rules first, when you decided to do this?
And, again, a change that you yourself said this week and two months ago that you regret and it was a mistake.
VOICE: We never -- but I don't regret not changing it for the Supreme Court.
Let me read you a quote of Mr. McConnell. You like to put up quotes. He said, I think we can stipulate -- and my good friends on the other side of the aisle stipulated from time to time over the years, when they were in the minority, that in the Senate, it takes 60 votes on controversial matters. That has been the tradition of the Senate for a long time. This is nothing new.
PAT: Tough.
VOICE: Then why did you change the rules in the first place? I go back to this because now we're going down this slippery slope.
PAT: Good.
VOICE: And everybody has hypocrisy on their side to point the finger.
VOICE: Yes. Yes.
VOICE: But you guys are hand in hand sliding down the slope. Tell me this, in ten years, do you think the filibuster will still be alive for anything?
VOICE: Yeah. That's one of the few things that my dear friend Mitch said on the show that I agree with.
PAT: So disingenuous. Your dear friend Mitch. Okay.
VOICE: I don't think there's any thirst to change the legislative rules. Sixty votes for that.
PAT: Such a lie.
VOICE: Most Democrats and most Republicans have served in both the minority and majority and know what it means. But why not -- you know, you can do a lot of finger pointing. Each side has some right here. Let's stop this now. And the way to stop it is the way I mentioned. You know, other --
PAT: And the way to stop it is to do exactly what he wants and nominate somebody he's fine with --
GLENN: My way. As long as we do it my way, we're fine. Give me a justice that we want and we'll be fine.
PAT: Yeah.
GLENN: Forget about you.
PAT: Exactly.
GLENN: I mean, they didn't care a lick about what the Republican said.
PAT: Not at all.
STU: Of course not. And, you know what, honestly, they shouldn't. You know, they shouldn't.
If you have control of all three branches -- or, not all three branches, but all three -- you know, you're going through House, Senate, presidency, you have all three of those, you shouldn't be consulting with the other side. You should go pick somebody you think is good for your side, just like they got --
PAT: And that's the situation Republicans are in right now.
STU: Yeah, and it was just like the one the Democrats were in last time. Not the whole time.
PAT: Make it happen.
STU: Not the whole time.
GLENN: Well, I believe that's where we first heard elections have consequences.
STU: Yeah.
PAT: Yes.
STU: And what they do, you should be able to push through your own Supreme Court justice if you're the president of the United States and you have control of the House and the Senate. Yes, you should be able to do that.
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