Cory Booker Claims Republicans Filling Supreme Court Vacancy is the ‘Height of Hypocrisy’

Democratic New Jersey Senator Cory Booker appeared this morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with Chuck Todd and in a clip that Booker shared on Twitter, he received a question from Todd regarding the efforts of Senate Republicans to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court left after RBG’s death.

Booker says in the tweet, “It is the height of hypocrisy that Republicans are trying to rush a Supreme Court nominee through the Senate just weeks before the election.”

It is the height of hypocrisy that Republicans are trying to rush a Supreme Court nominee through the Senate just weeks before the election. pic.twitter.com/wFeU0lq2wG

— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) September 27, 2020

In the video, Todd asks Booker, “Which should be the precedent? The one Republicans invented in ’16 or the one they are inventing now?” Booker responds that he asked Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsay Graham and Repubicans that very same question.

Booker, who is also on the Judiciary Committee, complained that former president Barack Obama put up a nominee “269 days before” the last election and now “Donald Trump is doing it while people are voting in the midst of an election.”

Booker also claimed that some of their “members have said this is wrong and this is not fair.” He did not, however point out that when Obama nominated someone to replace a conservative Supreme Court Justice who had passed, Republicans held the Senate.

Yesterday, Booker tweeted out that “Donald Trump’s nominee is a direct threat to the Affordable Care Act, reproductive choice, and so many other liberties we hold sacred. We can’t be silent as he tries to rush a Supreme Court Justice through the Senate. The American people deserve to have their voices heard.”

Rik Mehta, who is Booker’s Republican opponent in the November election, responded by saying “The American people’s voices were heard in 2016 when they elected President Trump and a Republican senate and again in 2018 when they expanded on that senate majority. Confirm Amy Coney Barrett.”

The American people’s voices were heard in 2016 when they elected President Trump and a Republican senate and again in 2018 when they expanded on that senate majority.

Confirm Amy Coney Barrett https://t.co/VRmjJyh1Ti

— Rik Mehta (@RikMehta_NJ) September 26, 2020

From the AP:

Booker is unabashedly liberal; Mehta said in an interview he won’t distance himself from President Donald Trump, who isn’t popular in New Jersey.

“I would describe myself as pretty unapologetically Republican,” he said. He added that he’s “completely happy with the direction the president has taken this country, especially before the pandemic.”

Mehta, who is Indian American, would be the first person of Asian descent to win a Senate seat from New Jersey if he is victorious. He would also be the first Republican since Clifford Case in 1972 to win a Senate election in New Jersey