BENSON BYTE: Mollie Hemingway Breaks Down the Left's "Fever Swamp" Campaign to Delegitimize the Supreme Court

At Walmart, we're helping our associates build meaningful careers. One way we're doing that, investing $1 billion in training and education. Last year, more than 100,000 associates earned promotions. Combined with benefits like 401K matching and paid parental leave, we're proving that Walmart isn't just a place to work, it's a place to grow. Learn more at walmart.com slash grow at Walmart. Now it's time for another Guy Benson, Guy Benson Fight, where we bring you the day's most interesting interviews in a bite-sized package. For the full episode, visit Guy Benson.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm very pleased to welcome to the show, our friend Molly Hemingway, editor-in-chief at the Federalist, Fox News contributor, and a best-selling author, including of her new instant bestseller, made the New York Times list, Samuel Alito, the Justice who reshaped the Supreme Court and restored the Constitution at MZ Hemingway on social. Molly, congratulations and welcome back. Thank you. It's so great to be here with you. I actually want to start with your book before I get to some related issues in the news, because last time we had you on the show to talk about this book, it had just come out, either that day or the day after. And I had started the book, but had not finished the book. I have since completed the whole thing. And a couple different things jumped out at me over the course of Samuel Alito. But there was one specific detail. almost like a side plot storyline that intrigued me that I just wanted to touch on with you, even though it's probably not the newsiest or juiciest thing that you reported in the book, I still just think, for those of us who have been involved in or have covered or paid attention to or have cared about the judicial confirmation wars now for many years, if you were to talk to many, many conservatives and you were to raise the name Harriet Myers, there would be a certain reaction, I would say, among many conservatives, like, oh, man, that was the terrible initial decision that President George W. Bush made in terms of nominating someone for an open Supreme Court seat, and the right revolted against him, and she was this cipher and a squish and would have been terrible. And thank God we all put a stop to that, because then we got Samuel Alito. And in your book, your treatment of Harriet Myers was just kind of, unexpected and fairly refreshing and I feel like I have to think about her differently now so can you just remind us of the sequence of events first and then maybe your somewhat counterintuitive or narrative busting take on her we'll get to that next President Bush and his team thought they would have a Supreme Court opening in their first term, but they didn't get one until June of the first year of their second term. And they thought it was going to be Chief Justice Rehnquist because he was in very poor health. But it turned out to be Sandra Day O'Connor. And so they filled that seat or they put up for that seat, John Roberts, who then right before his nomination hearing was about to be held, the Chief Justice did die. So they pulled that nomination.

and instead nominated him to be chief justice. Right. So there was Sandra Day O'Connor, the longtime justice appointed by Reagan, who decided that she wanted to step away. Just didn't want to do it anymore for various reasons, family and that kind of thing. So she retired, and that vacancy was initially filled, or the nomination was John Roberts to be an associate justice. And then there was a double vacancy because the chief justice then Rehnquist died before. the confirmation process for John Roberts. Is that roughly correct? Yes. And the Bush team said, we have to have a woman for this next slot. They all agreed. They were really into kind of that identity politics. But most of the women that were available were too conservative for the Bush team, or they weren't, they hadn't had enough experience. So they end up saying, we don't really have anyone. other than Harriet Myers, who's the White House counsel, not a constitutional lawyer. And it goes over horribly, as you noted. The conservative movement absolutely rebels. I had the same view you did, Guy, when I started writing this, but when I interviewed all these people in the Bush White House and saw that it was a much different story than we realized, including that Harriet Myers herself always wanted Samuel Alito to be the first nominee. And she insisted. on him getting that nomination eventually and the day after she has to have her nomination pulled because it's going nowhere she just gets to work on getting Samuel Alito confirmed i it was just very different than what i thought going into my reporting and research for the book yeah because i guess and i'm not sure why i believe this but i just assumed like oh this was some like Bush friend and they wanted a woman and she probably wasn't even that conservative, but she checked, you know, a certain identity box. And so they went with her and the principled conservatives all stood up and made it clear that that was not going to fly. And so then they had to retreat and put in a strong conservative, very qualified in Samolito. And that's just kind of... unfair to her, which is something that I did not know until I read your book because she, as you just noted, was a fierce advocate for him. And then even after, I mean, I can only imagine going through the humiliation to some extent or almost like an indignity of having this nomination and then having your own side torpedo it. And then it's like, oh, well, this giant job is no longer mine. I guess I just have to go back to being White House counsel. And, like, she put her nose to the grindstone immediately, no hard feelings, and was a cheerleader for Samuel Alito in that rigorous process. And, like, she did not let it get personal or, or bother her on any level to the point that she was going to try to take it out on him or anyone else. Like, what a high road sort of badass thing to do. I had no idea. She also was one of the people who worried that Chief Justice John Roberts. Everyone kind of knew he'd be pretty good. But she worried that he didn't have enough of a coherent judicial philosophy, which I think that take has also aged well in light of the Obamacare decision and a few other ones where conservatives wondered where they came from. She just was a – she is, but at that time she was a very –

balanced, thoughtful person, and she never wanted to be nominated. She was forced into that by the president who she very loyally served. And it was a difficult situation for everybody, yeah. But it does seem like based on your reporting in the book and the way that that all shook out, and I'm not saying it would have been all better if she had been nominated and confirmed, right? I think, you know, you've just written the book on Samuel Alito's like, hey, this guy's been this jurisprudential giant on the court. But Maybe this underlying assumption that she was some like rhino, lightweight, not a real conservative, kind of all the things that I imagined were probably not fair to her. It sounds like she was actually an extremely bright, principled. sort of clear-eyed conservative after all. And maybe I'm just displaying or advertising my own ignorance. I never met her. But that was just kind of like the overall vibe that I remember, the way that that confirmation thing all petered out. And I just wanted to raise this and to sort of flag this because I think that she's gotten a bad rap unfairly within the conservative movement. All these years later, I'm realizing it, and I just wanted to take an opportunity here to maybe, if not correct the record, just add to it, courtesy of your reporting. I would say that the rebellion made sense. Conservatives knew they needed a stalwart constitutional lawyer. uh her staff harry she agreed that that's my point like she yes and she agreed so i still think you know it all worked out very well for bush and for the party and for the movement to have Samuel Alito be the nominee but yeah i she definitely was misunderstood and her staff will say to this day they think she would have performed much better than people gave her credit for okay see that's just one of those things where you got to go buy the book read the book uh join the legions that have made Samuel Alito, a bestseller, and there's lots of little nuggets like that sprinkled throughout. Now, Molly, when we come back, I do want to shift to present day. and yet more attacks on the integrity and legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court, and other courts, by the way, from the left, they seem to be really ramping up on this sort of line of attack. I worry about where it may go, given the climate within democratic politics and left-wing politics today. You get into this a lot in your book, Samuel Alito, and now here we are. You could probably add another chapter already. de-legitimization campaign from the left years long against the U.S. Supreme Court. And you can go through the list, the attacks on the justices, the assassination threats and plots, the protests at their homes, Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader going to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court and threatening several justices by name in a very inappropriate way. And just all the

histrionics and theatrics in various confirmation hearings, the unprecedented behavior of Democrats, the attempted power grabs, the escalations, all of it. And you lay much of it out in your book. Here we are now looking at a decision that was just made recently on the Voting Rights Act that invalidates the constitutionality of racially gerrymandered districts. And that's sort of a simple way of putting it. But we're seeing that case out of Louisiana. It's having a ripple effect across the South. And once again, because Democrats have not gotten their way, they have not achieved the political outcome or ideological outcome that they want and they feel like they are entitled. to power and winning. It's like a birthright to them. They are once again ramping up conversations about quote-unquote reforms to the Supreme Court if they ever take power again, including some of them are just openly talking about packing the court. And one thing that you also note in your book is for decades. The left dominated at the Supreme Court, especially on cultural issues. They won virtually everything all the time, and there was a multi-decade campaign by the conservative right, especially the legal right, to slowly but surely turn the tide through winning elections and confirmation processes and the federalist society and all of that. And that is borne fruit today. through a completely legitimate process to have this six to three constitutionalist majority and the left which would have screamed bloody murder about any form of quote unquote reform back when they were always getting their way for decades they have turned on a dime on this institution and they are taking every opportunity to undermine it and set the table to frankly destroy it in some cases I just wonder if you can reflect, especially on what we've seen over the last week or two, because it seems like a lot of public figures in the legal realm and the political realm seem to be saying out loud what they intend to do to crush this institution if they're given the chance. I'm glad you're highlighting this guy because it has seemed to me that this is ramping up in really dangerous ways. People talk about politics all the time, but what happens with the court really should be protected from politics? You finally have a court that is saying that that... Okay, well, if something's not in the Constitution, we shouldn't say it is, or this is better handled, you know, by Congress than the president or by it than by the courts. And the left is willing to burn down our entire system of rule of law because that means that they're not able to engage in judicial activism. It's, to me, it goes across a line that should not be gone across and that it's happening from some of the highest levels of.

government officials. You had, as you mentioned, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries. These are prominent people, either threatening violence or threatening destruction of the court or other courts. I mean, the Virginia Supreme Court was also framed by the founders. you know, as it happens. And the whole idea that politics, they should be protected from politics. That's why they have lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court, why federal judges have those. That's why you can't cut their pay, because you don't want it to just be another political body. We already have two of those with the executive branch and the congressional branch. But the courts are supposed to determine, you know, to interpret the law faithfully and accurately. It should, it's a real problem if you don't have rule of law. That's where you get on a... Toboggin ride to a third world country, basically. Cheers to America's 250th birthday. Get 20% off your first purchase at Fox Newswineshop.com with code FM Radio 20. 20% discount excludes wine club offers and cannot be combined with any other promotion. Expires July 31st, 2026, must be 21 older to order to order. Please drink responsibly. Hakeem Jeffries, the man who would be speaker, even if Democrats have a blue ripple in the fall, he would be in line to be Speaker of the House. Here he is in cut 23. He's raging about the Virginia Supreme Court and what happened last week there. He's been raging about the U.S. Supreme Court as well. They just want their outcomes and they don't care what they burn down as long as they get their outcomes. Here he is making what sounds like a bunch of threats, by the way. Threats if the Democrats are able to not just win back the House but have full control of the government in D.C. That's why I think the stakes are high moving forward. This is... the potential next speaker of the house on MS now, cut 23. In a period of time, we do have these structural problems that need to be addressed. We've got to, for instance, make sure we pass the John Roberts Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act so we can end the error of voter suppression in the United States of America once and for all. We have to end Citizens United, dramatically reform our campaign finance laws to stop the ability of these deep-pocketed special interests to intervene. And we are going to have to explore. Massive judicial reform, state by state and at the federal level, and everything should be on the table as far as I'm concerned. All right. So we can talk about the so-called John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which was packed with shocking poison pills, which is why no Republican could ever support it. We could talk about Citizens United and Dark Money in politics and how the Democrats are actually the party of dark money that's actually benefited them dramatically. Quote, massive judicial reform. State by state and at the federal level, he said, everything should be on the table. Others, Molly, being more explicit. Cory Booker, senator from New Jersey, who I think fancies himself a presidential...

The expectation is it could be unanimous or lopsided and just dismissed by Friday. I wonder if you agree with that. But it was just amazing to see. once they lost because they broke the law and Abigail Spanberger's own team reportedly had said hey this could very well get invalidated we should not do it this way and the democrats said screw you we're doing it anyway and now the whole thing has fallen apart there were conversations about rewriting the rules to basically make all seven justices in virginia on the state supreme court no longer eligible to serve throw them all out and replace every single one of them with partisan hacks in order to shove through the new map. There are other extra or unconstitutional ways that are being discussed to go around this judicial ruling. It looks like for now the Democrats in charge have mostly said no to that in Virginia. Abigail Spanberger said she's against it, although she also said she wasn't going to redistrict than she did. So, you know, everything with a grain of salt. But the fact that this was spilling out into the open. that they were talking about really breathtaking maneuvers, like effectively firing retroactively an entire Supreme Court. I mean, these types of voices would normally just be limited to like, you know, Reddit commenters and, you know, people in the fever swamps online. But the fever swamp seemed to be actually maybe not fully running the show, but heavily influencing the conversation on the left right now. And it's one thing to have a fever swamp. You know, I also tell the story in the book about how there was an effort to impeach Earl Warren at the height of the judicial activism of his court. Everybody spoke out against it. Everybody left and right. You had major figures and institutions saying, this is not appropriate just because you disagree with his opinion. So they actually probably had a much better case than what we've seen in recent days. And yet when you have... prominent people saying, we are going to burn down the court, essentially. Who's speaking out against it? Who on the left is saying, this is dangerous rhetoric? This is tyrannical and despotic to fire everybody in a court for disagreeing with your... quite radical partisan political position that everyone knew was unconstitutional even as they were forcing it through. I don't think there can be enough pushback or outrage over this. It's not, you know, it shouldn't be a partisan issue. We all need the courts. Rule of law has so much to do with peaceful living and economic security and economic well-being. You go to countries that don't have rule of law, that's where you don't have flourishing citizens. Our rule of law has been a bedrock of our system. The New York Times treated this proposal, this insane proposal to fire all the Supreme Court justices of Virginia, as if it were an intriguing idea instead of calling it what it is. Yeah, it's like you don't, you actually should be.

highlighting the danger involved with destroying a branch of government. Well, especially the people who drone on about democracy and norms and fighting authoritarianism, when, in fact, a lot of that just seems to be projection on their own part. They also have this self-delusion on the left, that they are sort of the very rational party. They're the moral. party they are the reality-based community as they used to refer to themselves and then i saw this was a survey molly highlighted this week in the washington post self-identified democrats in this country were asked about a number of different events and 42 percent of those Democrat-leaning respondents in the poll said that they believed the Butler Pennsylvania assassination attempt against Donald Trump was faked or staged. 42%. That is not just a fringe fever swamp. That is a huge number of people. And this was an incident, as we recall, terribly. in which Donald Trump was shot in the ear on live television and one of the rally goers seated behind him was shot dead by one of the bullets. That man is gone. He was murdered by that assassin. Trump barely survived because he turned his head at the last second. And 42% in this Washington Post highlighted survey of Democrats think it was staged. I mean, I worry. very significantly about our ability as a society to resolve differences in any sort of rational way when we look at what's been said about the court in the last couple of weeks and you couple it with a polling data point like that it's pretty dark You're depressing me, guys. I'm sorry. That's not my intention, but I have to talk about it. There are people, you know, you see this on left and right. Sometimes there are people who have fringe beliefs. The thing that concerns me is anytime like 10% of Republicans believe something wacky, it dominates the news cycle. This is not the first time you've seen a significant percentage of Democrats believing crazy conspiracy theories. And yet it doesn't seem to... received the pushback that it would if it were on the right. You might remember that a majority of them at one point believed that Donald Trump had stolen the election in 2016 by colluding with Russia. You also had people, including like all the way up to Barack Obama, I think, believing that Karl Rove had stolen the 2004 election for George W. Bush by controlling the voting machines in Ohio. You know, there are these fringe beliefs that will get latched on to. And it is important that we have quality media so that people know can all operate from the same set of facts. And we just are not at a highlight of media performance these days. No, I mean, it hasn't been for a long time. I think the Butler story should be having should be covered more. It should have, you know, we should know much, much, much more about the attempted assassin and the man and the guy who killed the and shot the people there in Butler, Pennsylvania. But.

We don't have a media even curious to dig into his background. And that also can help perpetuate some of these conspiracy theories. When the crazy stuff. get shoveled into the conversation by extremists on the right, the media recoils and rushes to debunk and to give context and all of that. And sometimes, by the way, they lie and they turn non-conspiracy theories into conspiracy theories. But when there are bona fide, crazy, insane conspiracy theories on the left, you don't see the same degree of... recoiling and this instinct to go fight it because unfortunately a lot of people in elite newsrooms either agree with the conspiracy theory or somewhat agree with it or realize it's their fellow partisans pushing it so they don't want to really betray the tribe too hard or too loudly and that is where we end up in the place that we're talking about here and it is perhaps slightly depressing and yet it is reality which is why i brought it up with molly hemingway fox news contributor you can read her stuff at the federalist and buy her best-selling book Samuel Alito the justice who reshaped the supreme court and restored the constitution available everywhere right now mollie as always thank you so much thank you guy that was yet another Guy Benson bite for full episodes of Guy Benson go to Guy Benson dot com or wherever you get your podcasts

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