questioning potentially supreme court nominees under the trump administration. and then, there are, and it has been reported out there and i will tell you is absolutely true, that the judges piece in the judicial piece is something that then biden harris campaign was that extremely focused on. if in fact joe biden were to win the nomination, what would be the plan for judges? much has been made talking about the fact that the obama administration left a lot of judges on the table. and the trump administration confirmed a lot of judges two very important seats at the federal level. well, the biden harris administration has done a very good job of confirming judges with diverse backgrounds, folks who are not just prosecutors, but public defenders, people who had civil rights backgrounds. this particular white house has really set and i think anybody, objectively, looking at it would say the same.
it today, since president biden plans to stick to that pledge. and yes, conservatives are going crazy about it. pretending there s absolutely no precedent for this, this is an outrageous thing that joe biden promised to do like ronald reagan did not exist. ronald who? it is also worth knowing, though, that when joe biden made this pledge during the campaign, a pledge that he is now going to live by and that will shape history from here on out until we got a new nominee on the court. when joe biden made this pledge, which we are now going to live by, it was a really consequential thing when he did it. it had a huge political impact when he did it. and it was also no sure thing that he was going to do it. at least by one account, his most influential staff members on the campaign told him, as late as the day as he made the pledge, that he should not do it. this is from a book about the
i made a pledge, and i will live by it. in terms of this decision today, from president biden, as you can tell from the start of the show, there is so much emphasis on who the president will pick for what will soon be the open seat. i wondered if you could talk a little bit about how the court will change with the loss of justice breyer. i thought your reporting today at npr about, not only is pragmatism, but is behind the scenes effect on other rulings, on his fellow justices, that seems like something that is pretty hard to shop for in another nominee because you don t know how these justices will work together. it also just seems like a rare quality. it is a very rare quality. it stands apart from his very strong belief that the trust that the american people have in the supreme court is based on some idea of consensus. and not having rapid changes,
suddenly, to make it look like it is just a political decision dressed up in a black robe. last year, he had a good term. he managed to get some of that consensus about some things. this year, it is something else. we literally could see him folding his head in his hands like this. he sees the court is going very dramatically to the right. potentially, overturning roe v. wade. now, possibly heading in the direction of overruling the idea that colleges and universities can teach race and college admissions. you see it in the desire to move very quickly in the motion of gun rights. he is not a fool.
i was glued to that coverage. as pete broke that news on our air, here on msnbc. and then, after pete had concluded his reporting, i cheated on my msnbc family because i immediately wanted to jump over to npr to find what s nina totenberg reporting would be on the announcement, knowing that with her experience as a supreme court reporter and with her deep connections to so many of the justices and those around them on the court, she would have detail and insight that no one else had. as to where this decision came from and what it will mean for the court. and indeed, all day long, her reporting for npr has been priceless. just a piece of it today quote, if he had not been a justice, hollywood might have made him up. deeply intellectual, fluent in not just law but also philosophy, art, and culture, he is also absent minded, geeky, self deprecatingly funny, physically fit, but so preoccupied that he three times suffered serious injuries when akram s bicycle.