Biden Backs Killing Filibuster for Abortion, But Manchin and Sinema Say No Within Minutes

CLAY: For those of you out there that are paying attention to the Joe Biden administration, Buck, what is amazing to me about Joe Biden — and I don’t mean “amazing” in a good way — is he’s constantly coming out and arguing for principles or policies or political agendas that are shot down within 10 or 15 minutes of him coming out and advocating for them, and this happened again. He’s in Germany, overseas, getting ready to go to Saudi Arabia and bend the knee and beg for them to produce more oil and gas.

Generally speaking, the long-standing American policy has been, you don’t attack domestic politics overseas because it makes America look weaker to be feuding with domestic politics-related issues when we’re on the international stage. Biden can barely talk at this point. I don’t even know if he recognizes what he said and how awful it registered for many people. But I want to listen to you… I said he was in Germany. I apologize. Biden’s actually in Spain right now. Not that it matters very much one way or the other where he is. But this was today in Madrid, Spain, at the NATO summit.

Here was what Joe Biden had to say about the Supreme Court at his press conference:

BIDEN: The one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States in overruling not only Roe v. Wade by essentially challenging the right to privacy. We’ve been a leader in the world in terms of personal rights and privacy rights, and it is a mistake — in my view — for the Supreme Court to do what it did.

CLAY: Biden then built on this and argued that he is now in favor of removing the filibuster for purposes of “enshrining Roe v. Wade as a federal right” through congressional action. In order to do that, however, his own party would have to support him, and almost immediately upon Biden saying, “Hey, we need to change the filibuster rules to enshrine Roe v. Wade as federal law,” Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona and Joe Manchin from West Virginia — two Democrats that have consistently opposed much of Biden’s agenda — said they still will not change any of their positions on the filibuster. So enshrining Roe v. Wade as a federal right and eliminating the filibuster for purposes of this issue it appears is not going to happen. Your thoughts, Buck, as you saw all of this play out this morning and just blow up one more time in front of Joe Biden.

BUCK: Isn’t it amazing that Mr. Unity, Joe Biden, who promised to bring the country together, is talking about a “destabilizing” Supreme Court decision and, by doing so, destabilizing things.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: This is a perfect Bidenism. He acts like he is a savior or defender of the system when in fact he’s the one kicking at the load-bearing walls, taking a few swings with the sledgehammer because his polls are in the dumpster and his party is failing and we can all see it and we all know it. So what does he do? The usual, right? Takes shots at the other side, the same talking points you’ve heard before. Also, this “right to privacy,” I guarantee you Joe Biden didn’t actually read the Supreme Court decision last night. Guaranteed. There’s no… He’s a, quote, lawyer, right? He went to law 50 years. This guy is not somebody’s who’s up on the latest jurisprudence.

CLAY: I think finished last in his class at Syracuse.

BUCK: Yes.

CLAY: If I’m not mistaken.

BUCK: A distinguished… I think it might have been second or third-to-last, to be fair.

CLAY: Low ranking in his class at Syracuse.

BUCK: But not blowing anyone away with his intellectual prowess in his twenties —

CLAY: Intellectual acumen. Yes.

BUCK: — nonetheless, and that was Syracuse law school in, like, what seventies?

CLAY: I think way before the seventies.

BUCK: Sixties? He’s old, man, I can’t even keep up.

CLAY: I would think it would have to be the sixties.

BUCK: Sixties. So the point here being, Joe Biden’s got nothing. But I also think “the right to privacy,” this was the concoction, this was the fabrication that all of Roe is built on and was just completely dismantled. What is that right, exactly? Do you have a right to privacy to abuse your spouse because it’s behind closed doors in your home? No, you do not. Do you have a right to abuse your children because of a right to privacy?

This Joe Biden talking point and the whole regime that Biden has around him that’s collapsing, along with the talking points, just shows you, Clay, how desperate they are. I said this before: Gavin Newsom is now… They’re just money machine goes, “Brrr! Send everybody checks! Just start sending people checks in California so they don’t turn on your party,” in a period of high inflation, mind you.

CLAY: Yeah, that’s the craziest thing. California’s solution to inflation — we’re not even making this up — is to send 23 million, I believe it is, households $1,050. So, the way for the government to solve inflation, I guarantee you, is not by the government giving people more money. Buck, there are two things that jump out to me about this aside from the fact that Joe Biden’s own party won’t support his policy. Number one, this, to me, means that the abortion issue is not registering with voters, okay?

And what I mean by that is, if it were registering with voters on a high-intensity level, they wouldn’t be desperate to try to enshrine it in law right now while they have control of Congress. They would use it primarily as an issue for why people need to support ’em. So I don’t think that the abortion issue is really registering like Democrats hoped it would. Second part: If this were to occur, as we have seen with Supreme Court justices, sooner or later what happens is abortion would become tax policy. Let me explain what I mean by that.

When a Democrat or a Republican president comes into office and typically has strong majorities in the House or Senate, what do they do? They change tax policy, the tax rates on capital gains ’cause of different views of how the government should grow the economy — by the way, Republicans are right. (laughs) All of the data reflects that when you stifle growth with high tax rates, you end up choking out so much growth. But you’re constantly shifting the tax policy based on who’s in positions of power at that time.

If this were to happen, Buck, I think what would happen is abortion would constantly be shifting back and forth on a federal level because when Republicans got control of the House and Senate and the White House, they would pass laws that gave states the right, or they would try to put past their own federal legislation, and so you’d constantly be swinging from one direction to another, and it would basically turn abortion into the tax policy where one eight years, the policy is one way and then eight years later, it’s change in the other direction.

BUCK: And of course this would, speaking of destabilize, as Biden said, this would really destabilize any faith that people have —

CLAY: It would be a total crazy thing.

BUCK: — foundational rule of law, right? Because to your point, Clay, okay. The top tax rate federally, 39%, 35%, all right, the only certainties in life, death and taxes, right?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: We know we’re gonna be paying taxes. If you’re a 35% guy fortunate enough to be last year and now, you’re a 39% guy, it’s annoying, but the shift that you’re talking about now that would happen in law would be —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — well, let’s say a medical doctor who provided an abortion for somebody did a year ago is now considered murder, but after the fact, they can’t write in that prosecution.

CLAY: You’re constantly shifting back and forth.

BUCK: — so you’re gonna be now having people who say, the law now says what I did a year ago is murder and I can go to prison. We have Governor Noem on. I think in South Dakota you could face up to a life sentence nor abortion, I believe, or maybe it’s 35 years. We’ll ask about some of this but in some of these states these trigger laws are very serious. So then the federal law could come in, “Oh, no, it’s fine! Everyone has a right to this for all three trimesters,” and then Republicans take charge and it’s, “Oh, no, actually you can go to prison for decades for this.”

Cycles of that will destroy all faith in the rule of law, and everybody should understand that. We know that states have different laws. And they stay with those laws. The federal government coming in to make all 50 states keep shifting? It’s just untenable. That’s why this idea they had of setting up abortion clinics in national parks… What do they think happens when Republicans take control of the Congress?

CLAY: It’s all emblematic, I think, of the craziness that we’re in. If you allow an exemption to the filibuster for purposes of abortion, Republicans are certainly going to, first of all, respond in kind on abortion. But eventually once you create these exceptions, the filibuster’s gone.

BUCK: Yeah, Democrats are such a bunch of whiny little brats on this. They wanted to use the exception of filibuster for H.R. 1, for voting rights; so important; so important.

CLAY: That’s right. They’re constantly trying to craft these exceptions.

BUCK: Everything they want is so important that it’s the one-time break in the filibuster. Seriously, it’s like we’re negotiating with little children who are being terrorists.

CLAY: It also is just going to create a huge mess. So the end result — and Biden had to know this, Buck — is that Sinema and Manchin aren’t changing their positions, and barring some totally unexpected Republican support for this filibuster change, then what Biden said in Spain earlier today was essentially wiped out as a policy imperative within 20 minutes, almost, of him saying it, meaning that he’s really just saying this to try to placate the left wing in his party, knowing, in my opinion, the practical reality of it occurring is virtually zero.

BUCK: I think it’s also bluster from Biden, right? I mean, this is just —

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: — what else is he going to say? What has he delivered for the left-wing base other than a lot of inflation? People don’t remember the checks they were getting six months ago, a year ago, right? That whole… Any goodwill from the inflation machinery that he put in place is gone.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: That’s why now what is he offering? He’s offering Jan. 6 — which we’ll talk more about the latest with that later on — and, what, this?

CLAY: I think it’s such a well said argument. And this is one that I believe Republicans need to be hammering more. Buck, Biden failed with a House and Senate backing him. And not only did he fail in terms of creating the worst economy and maybe the worst overall environment in our country in most of our lives, the only reason it’s not worse is because members of his own party refuse to allow him to do what he wanted to do! Democrats were a disaster, but they were only protected from being… What’s even worse than a disaster? A cataclysm? I don’t even know. It’s a good question. What is a worse word than a disaster?

BUCK: A Bidenism.

CLAY: (laughing) The only reason it’s not an apocalyptic is because they actually opposed what he was trying to do, Buck, and I don’t think Republicans are making that argument strong enough because Biden’s gonna say, “Oh, well, grrr, I didn’t want my own what I wanted to get done.” No, if you had, everything would be worse. Everything would be so much worse if he had actually gotten what he wanted.

BUCK: And all of the things that he could do, and that the federal government could do to improve the situation in a material way — to bring down the cost of energy, to bring down inflation, to increase economic growth, to secure the border, to bring down violent crime across the country, all the things that would work to do that — Democrats are ideologically opposed to. They don’t like the solutions, so we keep suffering as a result.

CLAY: He told us all, Buck, we were gonna have a “winter of death” and tried to make sure that 84 million people had to get the covid shot, and the only thing that stopped that from happening was the Supreme Court!