RNC chair accuses Biden of running on 'biggest power grab in history'
Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, argued Sunday that former Vice President Joe Biden is running for president on the "biggest power grab in history" and is "being given a free pass for it."
McDaniel made her claim after CBS News' Margaret Brennan asked her an unrelated question about whether President Trump's re-election campaign would put coronavirus safety protocols in place for any in-person fundraisers in the lead up to November's election. "Who cares?," McDaniel responded, wondering why the media isn't focusing more on a potential Supreme Court expansion under a Biden presidency.
Brennan explained that she cares "because it's the president, and I want to know what he's doing," but that didn't appear to satisfy McDaniel who said the Democratic presidential candidate "is saying he's going to stack the Supreme Court, get rid of the filibuster," and "upend checks and balances in the third branch of government."
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Biden actually hasn't said he favors stacking the Supreme Court, but, while he has explicitly opposed the idea in the past, he has generally refrained from engaging with the question since President Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the bench last month. Democrats, including Biden, believe the Supreme Court vacancy shouldn't be settled until after the election, in keeping with the alleged precedent set by Republicans in 2016 when they refused to hold a hearing for former President Obama's Supreme Court nominee.
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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.
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