SCOTUS Leak Puts Target on Justices with Left in Violent Meltdown

CLAY: I went to Universal Studios for two days, and I went to Sea World for a day, so I was everywhere. But I was on It’s a Small World when Politico’s story broke about the leaking of the opinion, and that’s really where I’m super fired up, Buck, because this is me as a lawyer: In my life, we have never had a Supreme Court opinion like this leak.

So this, immediately, to me, is an attempt to put pressure, certainly, put a target, potentially — in the world we live in today, a violent-nature target — on the Supreme Court justices who are potentially going to overturn Roe v. Wade. It is designed, I think, to put more pressure on Democrats to end the filibuster at 60 votes and make it a 50-vote majority so that they can expand the Supreme Court.

As soon as it came out and I read everything that Politico wrote, those were my immediate thoughts right off the top — and I know you talked about this a lot yesterday, obviously, as it was such a monumental story. My prescription here, Buck, would be John Roberts needs to join this opinion and make it 6-3, and it needs to be immediately released as is to end, at least on some level, the violent threats and danger that are potentially out there for all of the conservative justices who are voting to overturn Roe v. Wade.

And the other thing I would continue to hammer home is this doesn’t end Roe v. Wade in terms of abortion, right? It puts it back on the states where this probably should have been from the get-go, makes it what it is — a political issue — and allow everybody who has a strong opinion on abortion to advocate for their state legislature, for their state senate, for their governors so that politics they can actually make a decision on a political nature.

Anybody who’s been to law school and has read Roe v. Wade knows it is an awfully written opinion, and it was clearly designed to get to the result that it did. But it has been a absolute mess for, whatever it is, 50 years nearly now. And so putting it back on the states, I think, is the way that this should have been resolved.

I actually hope that this will take some of the heat in the long range, Buck, out of this issue because people can advocate for it. You can support candidates on whichever side you want to support and allow the political process to play out, as opposed to allowing nine justices — constantly shifting nine justices — to make decisions about this.

BUCK: Yeah. To the degree that it’s possible, the political process through self-governance and the legislature of course rooted in the Constitution, this was a bastardization of constitutional principles that create a right where clearly none existed. But you can either have consensus or you can have conflict management through process of the states voting on and deal with these issues and the complexities therein.

Instead, we had the one-size-fits-all approach from the Supreme Court on a very important and very, very emotional — let’s be honest — issue for a lot of people. And now you’re seeing as well, Clay, a meltdown underway. It’s hard to even refute the arguments that are being made against this because they are so varied, flimsy, and irrational at the same time. Now, I know there are some arguments that are obviously more serious than others about this.

You’re having people say now, “Oh, well, this will lead to overturning all Supreme Court precedents,” and that’s just a bad-faith argument because there are some precedent for overturning precedents. We can name what the cases are. Everybody knows that. But I also just think that people have gotten used to not having to even… The left, the pro-abortion lobby, they’ve gotten used to not even having to make the argument.

They just point to — like it’s a big neon sign — “It’s a constitutional right,” and everything flows from that. And a lot of people — half the country, roughly, give or take — have been sitting there saying, “Okay. We could have a whole discussion about what the restrictions and everything should be or whatever it may be, but this whole, ‘It’s a constitutional right’ thing is obvious bullcrap, okay?” We shouldn’t be…

But we were forced to deal with that for 50 years. So I think there’s now a recognition, Clay, that even though there will be as you’re saying, there will be abortion dealt with as a states’ legislative issue. The people who are in favor of this — Planned Parenthood, all the rest of them — they’re going to actually have to make the case for why should it be, at six months, at three months, at four weeks, at six weeks.

What are the realities here and what’s the argument instead of just pointing to the big neon sign that was given to them in 1973 that says, “It’s a constitutional right. Shut up, peasant! This is the way it goes.” So I think that’s part of the emotional outburst, ‘cause we have… Do we have…? There’s been a lot of this. Elizabeth Warren is shouting about it. Here. Kamala Harris, the vice president, she’s just screaming essentially about what’s going on here.

BUCK: That’s just not a legal argument, Clay. Not even trying to be one.

CLAY: Well, if you believe, as I do, that we have 50 state laboratories, then there will be 50 different laws as it pertains to abortion, right? That’s where we’re headed, and the New York Times did a study that found that Roe v. Wade being eliminated on a federal level, 86% of existing abortions would still occur. Now, I don’t know if that’s true.

One positive in the last 50 years — I know people can’t talk about positives — is the overall number of abortions have continued to decline. And I do think, Buck, that everybody out there listening would say — and that this should be a goal. The number of accidental pregnancies should continue to decline in the decades ahead, I would like to think, because there are all different sorts of ways to avoid getting pregnant.

And so teenage pregnancy is down massive. I don’t know exactly why that is. I think it’s something that deserves a substantial amount of study. When we were kids growing up, Buck, it used to be not uncommon for 14- and 15-year-olds to have babies. There’s almost no 14- and 15-year-olds statistically having children now. So the number of teenage pregnancies, the number of people that are having children at young ages continues to decline.

And so I would hope that by having this now in the political realm — where people have to debate, where people have to defend their perspective, whatever it is — and where everybody can go vote and share whatever their opinion is, that it’s going to actually in the long run dial down the intensity and the anger and the vitriol that surrounds this issue. Will it? I don’t know.

But over the last 49 years, it certainly hasn’t diminished, and we got people breaking police car windows all over L.A. And let me just, by the way, bring up the dumbest person in media. I gotta give her this title. She is the dumbest person in media. Joy Behar went on The View yesterday — and we were talking about this off air, Buck.

I legitimately wonder what arguments are made to Joy Behar and she says, “No, that’s too dumb for me to say.” She said as a result of this report, she’s worried about racial segregation in American schools, Buck. Listen to cut 6. The dumbest woman in media, Joy Behar, weighing in.

BUCK: You notice, Clay, the first thing I said, I mean, I see idiocy right now on the airwaves with Joy Behar. The first thing you said was that the most unserious argument is, “Now the Supreme Court’s just gonna overturn everything; you’re gonna have no rights!” This is just a spasm of emotion from people who haven’t actually thought there…

Never mind reading the actual draft opinion, that’s way beyond a lot of people opining on this. You and I were texting. What did we do as soon as this comes out? Read the opinion so you actually have one idea! That’s our step one. Joy’s step one, “Oh, God, I don’t even want to know what it is.”

CLAY: By the way, he specifically mentions in this opinion that it doesn’t apply to the things she’s worried about, right?

BUCK: But, you know, the other part of this is that for the pro-life… So there’s the legal argument about returning this to the states and just ending the fiction of a constitutional right to abortion. It has always been a fiction, it has been obvious from the start. It was honestly just an outrageous violation of core constitutional principles to try to fabricate this, and they got away with it for decades, which is pretty insane.

But for the profile movement, this now means two things. One: They’re on a playing field where they can actually now — to your point, Clay, about making the case. Now the pro-life movement in different states isn’t dealing with, because right to abortion, it wasn’t even just the constitutional right aspect of it that was fabricated. It was also these special access provisions and where can you protest and…

This got more protection and more absolutism from the left than any other right I can think of. This is gonna shift the whole prism now so that the pro-life movement state by state can say, “Our goal is now to get the legislature to actually eliminate abortion except probably when the threat to the life of the mother, for example.” I think you’ll see a number of states where that happens.

Instead of having to deal with the federal government just coming in and saying, “Well, there’s a constitutional right,” now you’re actually gonna have a political state-by-state fight where the pro-life movement feels like it can actually get what it wants, which is an end to abortion in a lot of ways, in a lot of states. I think that’s what you’ll see, and they also just view it as saving lives.

So even if it’s let’s say 25 states and 25 states, Clay, right? If the pro-life movement manages to get 25 statements to dramatically limit, almost entirely eliminate abortion, they view that as saving lives. So it’s a game-changer. It’s gonna motivate and mobilize them a whole lot all across the country.

CLAY: I don’t think there’s any doubt that there will be fewer abortions, right? That’s what the data will reflect. And, again, I just think 50 state laboratories, let’s have that battle, let’s see what ends up happening. What I believe should happen is get the opinion out, make it 6-3, and then I think what you have to think about politically…

We should have this discussion, too” What’s it mean for the midterms but also, what’s it mean for the Supreme Court going forward? The 6-3 to me is more important than 5-4 because the danger in a 5-4 vote, Buck — and I’m just gonna put it out there. The danger in a 5-4 vote is we have got a lot of crazy people in this country.

And a 5-4 vote, you are effectively telling them — especially while there’s a Democratic president — if you were to engage in violence and remove one of those voters, then you’ve got the potential to swing it back immediately. That’s pretty terrifying, I think, which is why if Chief Justice Roberts really cares about the overall trajectory of his court, a 6-3 vote would make it a lot safer — I’m being honest — a lot safer for the majority out there.

BUCK: Yeah, and that opinion should come out now, by the way. Not in the end of June. Now.