Supreme Court Nominations
Neo-Nazi Fuentes Praises GOP's ’Thinly Veiled Racism’ In Attacking Jackson
Nicholas J. Fuentes
Nicholas J. Fuentes

Democrats as well as some Never Trump conservatives have been lambasting Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and other GOP senators for their treatment of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson — President Joe Biden’s nominee to replace the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court — during her Senate confirmation hearings, which were held March 21-24. Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist and Holocaust denier who holds the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), agrees that some GOP senators displayed “thinly veiled racism” during the hearings. But in an unhinged video flagged as racist by People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch, Fuentes praises them for it instead of condemning it.

In the video, Fuentes says, “I can see the conservative movement is slowing coming back around to its implicit racism of the old days.”

Fuentes goes on to say that when Barack Obama was president, “there definitely was some thinly veiled racism there — a xenophobia: you Muslim socialist, you were born in Kenya…. And now that Ketanji Brown Jackson is the nominee, you’re kind of getting a little taste of that again.”

The AFPAC founder cited Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s comments on Jackson as an example of “thinly veiled racism.”

Fuentes, a supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, tells viewers, “Charlie Kirk said: take a good, long look at Ketanji Brown Jackson — this is what your country looks like on CRT…. What does that mean? It means: she’s Black, and if you’re a white guy and you dream of becoming a Supreme Court justice, you’re going to have to clerk for someone named Ketanji Brown Jackson. And Charlie Kirk was like — he was like this close to saying: Look at that Black face. Look at that Black face and her name — that’s what your country is going to look like.”

Fuentes has had an ongoing feud with Kirk, who ironically, he believes isn’t far enough to the right.

Other MAGA Republicans, however, have embraced Fuentes’ annual AFPAC event, which is often described as a white nationalist equivalent of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was a speaker at AFPAC 2022 in February, although she later said that she didn’t realize the event was organized by white nationalists. AFPAC also featured prerecorded speeches from Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona and Idaho Lt. Governor Janice McGeachin at its 2022 gathering.

Gosar and far-right pundit Michelle Malkin were among the speakers at AFPAC 2021. And Gosar has defended his association with Fuentes.

During his speech at AFPAC 2022, Fuentes praised Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and led the crowd in a chant of “Pu-tin, Pu-tin.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

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Polls Show GOP Attacks On Judge Jackson Got No Traction

Sen.Ted Cruz and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson

Image via YouTube

Senate Republicans have spent the past several weeks levying false attacks against Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden's nominee for the Supreme Court. But a new poll indicates the smears have not convinced the vast majority of American voters — two-thirds of whom back her confirmation.

A Marquette Law School poll released Wednesday found 66 percent of the nation's adults said they would vote to confirm Jackson — who would become the first Black woman in U.S. history to serve on the high court — if they were members of the Senate. Interestingly, 64 percent of poll respondents who were surveyed before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings began said they supported Jackson's confirmation, compared to 72 percent of poll respondents who were interviewed after the hearings began.

"It is an interesting and meaningful result given that some of the initial criticism before she was picked was, 'Why is Biden narrowing the field to just this demographic group?'" polling director Charles Franklin told USA Today. "Our evidence, at least, is that it certainly looks like a little bit of a net positive."

This poll matches the results of other recent polls, which indicated that Jackson is one of the most popular Supreme Court nominees in decades.

GOP senators started attacking Jackson's record as a judge and lawyer soon after Biden nominated her to the high court in February.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham first criticized Biden for picking someone who attended Harvard Law School, objecting to the fact that eight of the nine current justices earned law degrees from Harvard and Yale Universities — though he had himself voted to confirm six of them.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley began pushing widely debunked claims that "Judge Jackson has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes, both as a judge and as a policymaker" and that she showed an "alarming trend of lenient sentencing." As Missouri's attorney general, Hawley had agreed to a plea deal in at least one sex crime case that allowed a sheriff to avoid any jail time.

Republicans then used the very same "embarrassing antics" at Jackson's confirmation hearings to try to undermine her nomination that they had previously decried and vowed not to use.

Specifically complaining that Jackson — like GOP nominees before her — refused to weigh in on policy questions that are up to Congress, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said last Thursday that he "cannot and will not support Judge Jackson for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court."

Minority Whip John Thune, Republican Conference Chair John Barrasso, Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, and Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker have also announced their intention to vote no.

So far, only one Republican — Maine Sen. Susan Collins — has indicated her support for Jackson.

Thune (R-SD) toldThe Hill on Wednesday that he does not expect Jackson to get more than one or two more GOP votes. "I think the universe of votes that she could get in the Senate among Republicans is probably similar to what happened in the appeals court," he said, referencing the three Republican votes she received in June 2021.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote next Monday to advance Jackson's nomination to the full Senate.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent