It’s no secret that CBS’s Norah O’Donnell is a left-wing activist masquerading as a straight-shooting journalist. So, it wasn’t exactly shocking to watch her employ Democrat Party talking points to smear the Supreme Court during her recent interview with Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Released on Sunday, the roughly hour-long discussion was seemingly marketed as a detailed look at Barrett’s upcoming book, which promises to explore the Trump appointee’s experiences on the high court, thoughts on the law, and how the judiciary operates. But it’s clear after watching the exchange that O’Donnell had a much more sinister goal in mind than simply hearing the justice’s thoughts on such matters.
From beginning to end, O’Donnell treated the “interview” as an opportunity to try and discredit the Supreme Court and its rulings that she unmistakably disagrees with. One of the ways she did this was by painting the high court as nothing more than a rubber stamp for President Trump — a strategy displayed within the first few minutes of the interrogation.
After claiming Trump appointed her to “cement a conservative legal revolution,” O’Donnell asked Barrett if she is “concerned about the narrative of this court — that it is no longer a separate and co-equal branch of government.”
The “question,” of course, isn’t really a question at all. It’s a Democrat accusation intentionally couched in the form of a question to give the impression that O’Donnell’s dishonest framing of the issue is undeniably true (even though it isn’t).
And it’s a tactic O’Donnell continued to embrace throughout the rest of the interview.
The CBS host probed Barrett on if the “reputation of the Supreme Court matter[s] to you” and how the “Supreme Court make[s] sure that it appears and works in an apolitical manner.” The suggestion, as it seems, is that the court is damaging its credibility in the eyes of the public by ruling on cases in ways Democrats like O’Donnell find unfavorable.
One of the more deceptive examples of this scheme came later in the discussion when O’Donnell asked Barrett if SCOTUS risks undermining its credibility by regularly siding with Trump in cases that come before the court’s emergency docket — a situation O’Donnell (unsurprisingly) declined to mention stems from leftists’ lawfare against the administration.
“Do these repeated emergency or shadow docket interventions by the Supreme Court risk undermining public trust, especially if they are perceived to be politically motivated and favorable to President Trump?” O’Donnell asked.
See how this works, folks? When Trump criticizes rogue judges for usurping the authority of the executive branch, it’s an attack on the independence of the judiciary. But when leftists like O’Donnell try to undermine the Supreme Court for issuing constitution-based rulings, it’s a noble service in the name of “democracy!”
But lobbing accusatory questions is only one of the many dishonest tools O’Donnell wielded throughout her interrogation of Barrett.
The CBS host also employed a long-used media tactic of citing unnamed “experts” or “scholars” to attempt to provide some semblance of legitimacy to her phony queries and their deceptive framing. When discussing the current administration, for instance, O’Donnell demanded Barrett respond to “observers” (aka left-wing critics) who claim Trump “is pushing the boundaries of executive power [and] may be overreaching and [that] the Supreme Court is not providing an adequate check on that.”
For her part, Barrett was evidently having none of it.
During multiple exchanges in the interview, the Trump appointee calmly shot down O’Donnell’s dishonestly framed questions in a very “bless your heart” fashion.
For example, when O’Donnell asked Barrett why the Supreme Court won’t permit rogue lower courts’ overreaching injunctions against Trump to remain in place until the merits can be heard by the high court, Barrett eloquently disputed the CBS host’s apparent insinuation that the president’s policies are unlawful.
“We have to answer these interim questions when they come,” Barrett said. “I think you’re assuming that in a lot of these questions, the president is likely to lose on the merits. But remember, all of these judgments, these are legal questions that we have to make our best judgments about. And these cases necessarily reflect our view, tentative though it is at the time, that the president is likely to succeed on the merits.”
“[W]hen you look at the docket of the court, you are likely to see that it is a mirror of whatever the domestic issues are in the country at the time,” the justice added.
O’Donnell faced further embarrassment in the discussion’s concluding minutes. Shortly after struggling to remember how many amendments the Constitution has, the CBS host’s interrogation tactics seemingly got poor reviews from Barrett, who appeared to suggest O’Donnell’s dishonestly framed “questions” highlight the “biggest misconception about the Supreme Court.”
“I think the biggest misconception about the Supreme Court — and I think it kind of underlies some of the questions that you’ve raised, which come from outside the court — is that the court is just a partisan institution,” Barrett said. “I can understand why people think that, especially because justices come after nomination by the president and confirmation from the Senate. But that is not how the court functions.”
The entire discussion is quite remarkable and definitely worth watching in its entirety. Not only does it further expose O’Donnell for the lying partisan she is, but it provides a clear-cut example of how the media operate as a propaganda arm of the Democrat Party.
There is not an interview, “news” segment, or story they won’t distort, manipulate, or flat-out lie about in order to advance their agenda. That’s as true today as it’s ever been, and until these partisan frauds actually do their jobs in an honest and objective way, they deserve to be called out for it time and again.