This Sunday party takeover. Donald Trump may be leading in the polls, but it's President Biden who has the cash advantage in the 2024 campaign. We have to raise a lot of money. As his legal bills mount, Trump wants campaign donors to help pay them.
We have a lot of cash. We have a great company, but they want to take it away. They'd like to take the cash away so I can't use it on the campaign. Is that a winning strategy?
I'll speak with Ronna McDaniel, the former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee. Plus supreme decisions. Former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer speaks out about the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Did you think that a compromise was possible before the leak? Around 15 weeks. I usually hope for compromise and his decision to step down from the court. How difficult was it for you to decide to retire?
Joining me for insight and analysis are NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Ty, Kimberly Atkinstore, senior opinion writer for the Boston Globe, and Stephen Hayes, editor of the Dispatch. Welcome to Sunday. It's Meet the Press from NBC News in Washington, the longest running show in television history. This is MEET THE PRESS with Kristen Welker.
Good Sunday morning. Former President Donald Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election is putting an unprecedented stress test on American institutions ahead of the 2024 election, with the Supreme Court already deciding Trump can remain on the ballot in Colorado and now weighing whether he has total immunity in prosecution for his election subversion efforts. This week I spoke exclusively with former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, where I asked him about the weight a justice feels while considering these cases that have become central to the presidential election. Can you describe the weight that you felt that one feels as a justice when you are presented with a case in the middle of a presidential election?
This is not just an election. I mean, the court imagined you were on the court that decided Brown versus Board of Education. Imagine that you were on the court that had to decide, well, for example, whether President Nixon was immune from giving, didn't have to turn the tapes over to Archie Cox. Imagine that.
More of my interview with Justice Breyer is coming up. But first, I'll be joined by former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel in her first interview since stepping down as party chair. In full disclosure to our viewers, this interview was scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel would become a paid NBC News contributor. This will be a news interview, and I was not involved in her hiring.
This week, we learned just how much Trump's grip on the Republican Party is impacting the GOP's bottom line. The Biden campaign reported it has more than double the cash on hand of the Trump campaign. While the president himself has sharpened his attacks against his predecessor over his mounting legal debts, as those legal bills are growing, Trump had a new joint fundraising effort with the Republican National Committee that will filter donations to both his campaign and the super pac, paying his legal fees before the RNC even gets a cut. Which with Trump installing two handpicked loyalists to run the rnc, Michael Watley and his daughter in law, Lara Trump, the party is now fully formed in Trump's image.
We are going to determine the fate of not only the United States, but of the entire world and this body. The rnc, is going to be the vanguard of a movement that will work tirelessly every single day to elect our nominee, Donald J. Trump. We are going to make sure that every single penny of every dollar raised goes towards one goal, which is winning.
Joining me now is former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel. Ronna, welcome back to Big Press. Thanks for being here. Great to be with you.
Thanks for having me. Let's dive right into this and start with your decision to step down as RNC chair. If you can take me behind the scenes a little bit. Were you pushed out of your role?
Well, there's no question that as RNC chair you have to remain neutral. And we had a primary process and so we did. Right. We had debates and there was tension and a little friction that started during that process.
It was well played out in the media. And I knew at that point when I was doing that role and we were going to have debates, that when the nominee came forward and it was likely to be President Trump that they would want to switch. And that's his right as nominee. So were you pushed out by him?
He absolutely wanted me to move aside and wanted Michael Watley and large. And you say you were neutral. You did put out that statement before he was officially the presumptive nominee, effectively calling on Nikki Haley to step out of the race. Can you say you were really neutral?
I can't. I mean, we had a neutral primary. We had debates. I mean, look at the Democrats.
They didn't have debates. Now they have RFK Jr. Running as a third party. Imagine how the world would be different if they didn't allow those debates to take place.
I think that's so important to our public discourse. So. So yes, I was neutral, but as I said at that time, there was no math and no path. And that was true.
And so we did need to consolidate, consolidate behind the nominee. And that's what I did. You talk about the tensions around the debates. Was there a breaking point with former President Donald Trump and you?
It was a lot of tension with the campaign. He really did not feel like we should have debates. He said this publicly. I got a lot of phone calls and there were phone calls from Trump directly from everybody in his campaign.
And I did talk to him. And also you saw from Trump supporters, right? Don't support the rnc, don't give to the rnc, don't have debates. Listen, there are a lot of people who support President Trump in our party, but there are others who didn't.
And they needed to see that process to play out, to say this was fair. My candidate was given an opportunity to speak to the American people. The voters decided and this is the nominee. And because we let that process play out, he's the nominee without a third party running against him, which is the opposite of what the Democrats did.
You were replaced by Donald Trump's handpicked allies, including his daughter in law, Lara Trump. There's now this fundraising agreement which basically means the donations go to the super PAC to pay for his legal bills before they go to the rnc. Is it appropriate for Donald Trump to ask donors to pay for his legal bills? Well, I think as long as the donors know that that's what they're doing.
And so it is in the waterfall of it. It's the Save America before the rnc. What I also think that means is that the campaigns or the RNC's being troubles when they're saying they're not going to pay the legal bills, that it is going to continue to run through the Save America. But ultimately these donations are going first to pay his legal bills.
People who may be struggling in some cases to make ends meet. Is there not an ethical challenge with that? If they feel strongly to support his legal bills, then they have every right to. And I think he's being very open that they're helping with his legal bills.
And you of course paid $2 million for his legal bills while he was still in office. Do you have any regrets about that? Do you think that was an appropriate use of RNC funds? You know, as a former president, as somebody who raised a lot of money into the RNC, we paid less than 2 million in legal bills and we didn't, once he became a nominee or a candidate, we cut that off.
It's different when you're a former president. Then when you're a candidate, one RNC member told Politico that you were, quote, failed chair. Another said, quote, we lost the House, the Senate and the White House while she was chair. Did you deserve to stay on with that track record, Ronna?
You know, I push back on that very hard. You know, the fact that under my time as chair, we've had more women in Congress ever than in the history of our party, that we've had more minority growth in our party. And that didn't just happen. I had offices open in black, Asian, Hispanic communities that we had ignored as a party.
And we've seen growth as a result, which, by the way, we're seeing this a election as well. And then I'm gonna point out to this, the rnc, we don't do the messaging, we don't get the candidates. We're turnout. So if you look at 2022, just 2022, we turned out 4 million more Republicans and we would have won the Electoral College based on that turnout.
So when I say to people is if we're building the road that all the candidates drive on, and if one candidate got to the finish line, the road wasn't the problem. It's candidate to candidate. And I can go to every race in 2022. So I view my tenure as RNC chair as a success.
All right, well, let's talk about the election. Now. Donald Trump says one of his first acts if he is reelected to a second term would be, quote, to free those charged and convicted of crimes related to January 6th. Do you support that?
I want to be very clear. The violence that happened on January 6th is unacceptable. It doesn't represent our country. It certainly does not represent my party.
We should not be attacking the Capitol. We should not be having violence. I said it that day, I put a statement out that day that this is not acceptable. If you attacked our capital and you have been.
Have you? And you've been convicted, then that should stay so then. But to the question though, do you disagree with Trump saying he's going to free those who've been charged? I don't think people who committed violent act on January 6th should be free.
So you disagree with that? He's been saying that for months. Why not speak out earlier? Why just speak out about that now?
When you're the RNC chair, you kind of take one for the whole team. Right now I get to be a little bit more myself. Right? This is what I believe.
I don't think violence should be in our political discourse, Republican or Democrat. And I disagree with that. I agree with him. On a whole host of other things.
Let's close the border. Let's make sure we have good incomes for people. Let's make sure we do a lot of great things. But on that point, I don't think we should be freeing people who violently attack Capitol Hill police officers and attack the Capitol.
Ronnie, that is such a fundamental point. People argue, such a fundamental point to our democracy. You say you still support him. I assume you're still going to vote for him based on that.
What do you say to those superior answers to that question and feel like it's hypocritical to then vote for him? I think we have to make a choice, right? And everybody's looking at their candidates. They may say, I don't love everything about this.
I disagree with this. I don't like how they say this. But for me, when I look at my state of Michigan and I look at the cost of food, the cost of rent, the cost of insurance, that I feel less safe. Crime is on the rise.
That we're seeing fentanyl come across our border, that we're seeing an open border, I don't think there's any choice but to vote for the Republican. Even though you may have disagreements, it's him or Biden, and that's the choice. Just to be clear, though, studies show the crime actually is going down in major cities and the fentanyl that is getting to the countries coming across legal port entry. But let me turn to this next question.
Mitch McConnell said that Donald Trump was practically and morally responsible for the attack on the Capitol. Do you agree with him? You know, I don't think he wanted that attack to happen on the Capitol. But I will say that that attack is a dark day in our history.
There's nothing to be proud of about that day. There's nothing that we can look back and say, this was good. It's changed our whole country. And so I condemn what happened on January 6th.
Do I think he wanted that to happen or push that to happen? I don't. Well, now he seems to be very proud about it. He calls it a beautiful day.
Again, he's talking about freeing those who've been convicted. He. If you ask some of those who were convicted, they say they were there because Trump asked them to be there, because he's not there. I want to go, the RNC was not there on January.
What about Trump? I wanna ask you about TRUMP Because Mitch McConnell says Donald Trump was practically and morally responsible for the attack on the Capitol. Was he? I don't think he Wanted the attack on the Capitol.
Was he responsible, though? He may not have forese, but was he responsible? When I say that, I don't mean he wanted that happen. So I don't hold him responsible for that.
But I do think that it was a terrible day and it's not something to be celebrated and it wasn't a beautiful day. The RNC was not there. We did not coordinate. We were not, we were not part of planning that day.
But I also take it a different way, Kristin. When my kids see this on the Internet and they see all these flags and it looks like the Republican Party is part of this, it changes them. They say, mom, what is going on? Why is this happening?
It's frightening. This is a dark day in our history and we can never back away from the fact that we should all be condemning the events of January 6th. I want to turn out to your actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election. On November 17, you and Donald Trump were recorded pushing two Republican Michigan officials, election officials, not to certify the results of the election.
On the call, you're recorded saying, quote, if you can go home tonight, do not sign it. I, we will get you attorneys. Do you have regrets about that phone call? I'm so glad you asked me about this, because I've never had a chance to respond to this.
And if, you know, the course of what happened that night, these two individuals went into a hearing. They voted no. They didn't vote not to certify. They said, you know, we want an audit.
There were some problems in Wayne County. They've been consistent. They've been well documented over subsequent elections. And they said, as canvassers, we think we should have an audit before we certify.
That's all they asked for. Once the public hearing opened, they were called such vicious names, such vile names. Family members were being threatened that they changed their vote and they left shaken. And I did call them and say, nobody.
And I think we should agree with this as Republicans and Democrats, nobody should be threatened or bullied or pushed to change a belt. And that's what happened to them. And I'm going to finish by saying our call that night was to say, are you okay? That's my recollection, was three and a half years ago.
These are people I knew. I live in Wayne County. Are you okay? Are you all right?
Vote your conscience not pushing them to do anything. And then, let me, let me add one other thing. She was threatened to such a degree, Monica, that somebody's not in jail. I'm not going to say the threats she had.
But we can't, as parties say we shouldn't be attacking election workers. Election workers need to be safe. And then when it happens to Republicans, ignore it and only, only record it when it happens. Someone went to jail.
I understand, I understand what you're saying about concerns about her safety, but you got on the phone with her, with the then president of the United States. How can anyone say change your vote. But you said, call that. Do not sign it.
If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. How can people forget? No, the pressure was being put on from the hours and hours of threats and abuse they were receiving that coerced them to change their vote and they shouldn't have had to deal with. But if they're on the phone with you and Donald Trump, who is then the president, I'm not telling them do anything.
What I'm saying is I support you voting your content, knowing what you know now. Do you regret making that phone call, Ron? I regret the fact that people are being threatened for doing their job in this country. I think it's wrong to say I want a simple audit and to have your family be threatened, your daughter be threatened, your livelihood be threatened, being called racist.
Go look at the transcripts. And this is the one thing we can't have, one standard for Democrats, ultimately, there were 250 audits. They never found there was any corruption. Did you not have a responsibility as the RNC chair to say before January 6th the election is not rigged, that Donald Trump lost?
Given that there are. Given that there were more than 60 short court cases that occur all across the country and that Donald Trump lost, The reality is Joe Biden won. He's the president. He's a legitimate president.
I have always said, and I continue to say there were issues in 2020. I believe that both can be true. You can say massive laws were changed. They were changed through courts or through secretaries of state and after the legislative process in the name of the pandemic that took away safeguards of the election.
But you acknowledge, you acknowledge those. What you're talking about did not rise to the level in any way of overturning any November, which by the way, is when that call took place in November. The election happens in November. We're getting so much incoming.
We have a job to say this was done correctly. And I'll just finish about Wayne County. You know, there were precincts that didn't align. That's a fact.
That's not so why can't you say, hey, listen These precincts are aligning. Let me look under the hood. Let me just. Let me just stop you, because you did say.
You just said Joe Biden's legitimately elected president. This is the first time you have said this. It's not. This is what you said a year ago to Chris Wallace.
I won't tell you what you said. Are you saying as the chair of the Republican Party, that you still have questions as to whether or not Joe Biden was the duly elected president? Joe Biden's the president. No, I didn't ask you whether he was the president.
I don't think that. I think he won the election. I think there were lots of problems of 2020. He won the election.
Ultimately, he won the election, but there were lots of problems of the 2020 election. And that's fair. I don't think you want it fair. I don't.
I'm not going to say that. So you didn't say you want to fair. At that point, can you say, you sit here today, did Joe Biden win the election there and swear he won, he's a legitimate president. Fair.
And swear he won it. Certified. It's done. But I do want to say something to say that.
Why has it taken you until now to be able to say, I'll push back a little because I do think it's fair to say there were problems in 2020. And to say that does not mean he's not. When you say that, it suggests that there was something wrong with the election. You know, the election was most heavily scrutinized.
Chris Krebs said it was the most secure election in modern history. It suggests still that you're getting credence. You have states like Pennsylvania go from 260, 000 mail ballots in 2016 to 2.6 million, saying, you know what? When you get rid of ID for all mailing ballots, that's a concern.
We should all be concerned about the care, custody, integrity of every ballot. But that's all I'm saying. And you know what? This is the viewpoint of a lot of Republicans, and they think Joe Biden's the president, but they also think they were problems.
And both can be true. Even the Supreme Court. Ronnie, didn't take up concerns about the election result in Pennsylvania and a slew of the states. Let me just, Let me just stick to the.
I want to allow you to answer questions about your role in the 2020 election beyond the call that we were just discussing. The RNC helps the Trump campaign assemble fake electors in Michigan, provide a platform for Trump lawyers to hold that news conference with Rudy Giuliani alleging a global conspiracy to rig the election against Trump. And you yourself called the election rigged multiple times. Did you enable Donald Trump to spread election lies?
Let's go back to time. Initially, In November of 2020, there were concerns everywhere. Imagine you saw videos being put out, all types of things. You have to track that down.
So where I was in 2020 and the quotes that are being taken from a very long, long time ago, three and a half years ago, to where I am today, you've got to allow the process to play out. And I think it is fair to say there were concerns then, but no, Biden is the president and we need to move forward. And this is important for our country. John, I think what people struggle with is by the time January 6th happens, all of those court cases, more than 60 court cases, had already been litigated.
Donald Trump had lost. The Supreme Court said they're not going to take up concerns. As the head of the rnc, did you not have a responsibility to say Joe Biden won? I said that.
I said that at the time. Before January 6th, before January 6th. And you're still saying that there were concerns this morning. Saying there's concerns about the election doesn't mean he doesn't.
He didn't win. And that's, that's the only thing I'm gonna say. Listen, we are in 78 lawsuits right at the RNC. I'll give you one example once in Montana right now with Democrats suing to say, you shouldn't, you should be allowed to be registered to vote in two states.
Why are they suing on that? Why are you suing to allow voter ID to be removed in states? I disagree with that. Ronna, do you, to the people who feel like you enabled Donald Trump and his lies about the election, do you owe people an apology?
Do you owe this country an apology? I think the fact that we looked at things is what Democrats have done, Republicans have done. We're allowed to look after elections and say, I want to make sure this was done in a transparent and fair way. And I certainly do not agree with violence or any attacks on our Capitol.
And I'm going to be very clear, that is. That is something I condemn wholeheartedly. Very quickly, run before I let you go. You seem to be changing your tone as it relates to Joe Biden being legitimately elected.
Why should viewers, why should people trust you believe what you're saying? I don't think I'm changing my tone at all why should people trust what you're saying right now? One, I will say this, Kristen. Voters right now in this country are gonna be making a choice in November, and they don't care about 2021.
A lot of people say it's fundamental to the country's democracy. I think they're thinking about inflation, the border crime, their kids schooling. And I think it's really important. I represent 50% of this country, whether you like it or not, to be able to have different viewpoints and say, I disagree with that viewpoint, but it's important to hear.
It is important to our country. I am not changing my tune. This is where I have been. And right now we're heading into a criminal election.
Speak to the people who hold you responsible for enabling Donald Trump and his mistrus, his lies about the election. Why should they trust you when they say they don't? I think you should trust me. I mean, I can't.
I can't speak to people who don't trust different voices. I think you should be able to hear from different voices. And I have been able to talk to you about the concerns I had going to that election. And I wish there was more of a dialogue than that.
But let me be very clear. I love this country. I come from a state that's been overlooked. I don't see my state represented in a lot of news media.
I don't go home as chairman. Ronna McDaniel. I'm Ronna McDaniel. I go to the grocery store.
I do all these things. And I really feel like if our country is going to survive, we need to be able to have difficult conversations like this in a respectful way. We need more of that in our country. But we also can't go into our echo chambers and say, I'm only gonna listen to what Democrats have to say.
I'm only gonna listen to Republicans have to say, listen to it and make your own opinion. All right, Ron mcathaniel, thank you for having me here this morning. When we come back, Donald Trump's legal battles are testing the limits of his party and the courts. The panel.
Welcome back to panelists here. Chuck Todd, NBC News chief political analyst Kimberly Atkinstor, senior opinion writer for the Boston Globe and Stephen Hayes, CEO and editor of the Dispatch. Chuck, let's dive right in. What were your takeaways?
Look, let me do the elephant in the room. Yeah. I think our boss is owing you an apology for putting you in this situation because I don't know what to believe. She is now a paid contributor by NBC News, I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn't want to mess up her contract.
She wants us to believe that she was speaking for RNC when the RNC was paying for. So she has, she has credibility issues that she still has to deal with. Is she speaking for herself or is she speaking on behalf of who's paying her? Once at the rnc, she did say that, hey, I'm speaking for the party.
I get that. That's part of the job. So what about here? I will say this.
I think your interview did a good job of exposing, I think many of the contradictions. And look, there's a reason why there's a lot of journalists and NBC's uncomfortable with this because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination. So it is, you know, that's where you begin here. And so when NBC made the decision to give her NBC News as credibility, you ask yourself, what does she bring NBC News?
And when we make deals like this, and I've been at this company a long time, you're doing it for access, access to audience. Sometimes it's access to individual. And we can have journalistic ethics debate about that. And I, I'm willing to have that debate.
And if you told me we're hiring her as a technical advisor to the Republican convention, I think that would be certainly defensible if you told me we're talking to her. But let's see how she does in some interviews, maybe veteran with actual journalists inside the network. See if it's a two way what she can bring to the network. So I do think, unfortunately this interview is always going to be looked through the prison.
Who is she speaking for? Right. I think you did everything you could do. You got put into an impossible situation looking at this interview and then all of a sudden the rugs blow out from one of you, you find out she's being paid to show up.
It's unfortunate for this program, but I am glad you did the best you couldn't. That's why the three of us are on here to try to bolster that editorial independence about credibility as a journalist and as a lawyer. I think about credibility all the time. Credibility sources, credibility of witnesses and for the reasons that you laid out and also the timing that she is only here after she ousted from Trump's rnc, her credibility, book her on the show for years.
So her credibility is completely shot. So I have to do what My Andrew said, I believe what they do and not what anything that she said today. And in that I know that she habitually lied. She habitually joined Trump in attacking the press, members of the press, including this network, in a way that put journalists at risk, in danger.
And we do know that she carried water for Donald Trump. And we knew that she did participate in efforts to keep votes in Detroit from my hometown. So I take this both journalistically serious and personal to keep the votes for mostly black voters in Detroit from being counted that night. We know how that was talking to her, part of that pressure campaign that Donald Trump now stands accused in the court of law of doing so.
That's what I'm believing when it comes to Ronnie McDaniel, not anything that she said today because of those credibility. Where do you fall on this? Yeah, look, on the one hand, if you've read some of the criticism of NBC that has come since the announcement, it is very clear that some of the critics just don't want to be confronted with Republican voices or conservative arguments. So there is that, and that's bad.
We want to have a robust exchange between people who believe different things. But I agree, I agree with what's been said here. I mean, that's not what Ronnie McMann is doing. That's not what she's been doing.
And she has huge credibility problems. Not because she's been a partisan spinner on behalf of the Republican Party, because she not only presided, but directed, drove the qanonization of the Republican Party during her tenure. And it is the case that when you look at what she did with the fake electors specifically, she wasn't on that phone call because she felt bad about somebody. Donald Trump was on the call.
He was telling them. She was saying, we'll get you lawyers. Because the entire six week period after the November 2020 election was about making the case that the election had been stolen. She did a tremendous disservice to the country by making the argument that led to the erosion of faith.
Half of the Republicans right now believe the election wasn't fair. And even today, confronted with her past votes, she couldn't give you a straight answer until your fourth or fifth five presidents. Look, it's, it is important for this network and for always to have a wide aperture, okay? And covering voters that have disparate beliefs.
Having ideological diversity on this panel is something I prided myself. I'm gonna take you and I both to plenty of briefly, you have ideological and political diversity. I think this, I think all of us in nature Media do a terrible job sometimes of geographic diversity and all this stuff. But I sort of call into question and sometimes people think they understand the politics of this country when they're sort of in a very, very, very blue city.
You know, this is a Washington operative who I don't think is going to bring the network what they think it wants to bring to the network. I understand the motivation, but this execution, I think, was poor. Someone said to me last night, we live in complicated times. Thank you guys for being here.
I really appreciate it. When we come back, my conversation with retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. His thoughts on overturning Roe v. Wade, the state of politics in this country and his decision to retire.
That's next. Welcome back. He sat on the highest court in the country for almost 30 years. Justice Stephen Breyer, confirmed in 1994, helped shape the nation's laws through four presidential administrations and retired the same year of the Dobbs decision, which overturned the landmark abortion rights case Roe v.
Wade. I sat down with Justice Breyer at Harvard Law School this week where we discussed the controversial Dobbs decision and his new book, reading the Constitution, in which he urges the justices to look beyond the words as originally written in the Constitution to the real world consequences their rulings may have. You told the New York Times of the court today something important is going on. What did you mean by that?
I meant really what I've been writing here that I don't. I think the most important thing or characteristic to focus on is a change in the way that people are interpreting in general this document and the statutes towards what did people originally, when this was written, what did they take these words to mean in general? It's very attractive. You say that textualism, all you have to do is read this.
Fabulous. You've got the answer. Yeah, just read it and it's simple. And it'll stop the judges from doing what they want.
They'll be bound by the text. You say, sounds good. Sounds good, but it doesn't work very well in my opinion. And that's why I've spent a year and a half trying to explain why.
Let me ask you about the immunity case, if I could. In April, the court is going to hear arguments about Donald Trump's claim to be immune from criminal prosecution for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Why do you think the court took the case and wasn't necessary for the court to take the case? No, that's another case.
If I'm sitting around the table, I've read the briefs and that isn't being quite. It's true, my goodness, you can make mistakes just by saying what your initial opinion is and my goodness, how often it really occurs. I'm not just trying to get out of the question, because I can get out of the question by just saying I'm not gonna answer the question. But the point is there's so many times when you think, look, this is how decision making.
And I bet it's true for you, and I bet it's true for the people who work with you, and I bet it's true for business people and others. And that's why it's genuinely important to understand as best you can the details that are relevant to an important decision. And I think that's true of everyone who makes those decisions, but it's certainly true of a justice of the court. Let me try it this way.
Were you surprised that they took up the case or were you expecting them to? I didn't even not. I may have thought about that, but I'm. That's too close.
Too close. Let me ask it this way. You are a judge who knows what it is like to take up a critical case in the middle of a presidential election. Can you talk about Bushby Gordon?
Yes, Bushby Gore. I do remember. Can you talk about that? And in my opinion, I wrote they shouldn't have taken it up.
That's what I thought about Bushby Gore. I said they shouldn't have taken up the opinion. Now having taken it up, I think they should decide it the other way. That was my view.
All right. But it was a view reached after a considerable amount of work. I know that you're not going to weigh in on the current cases before the court, but big picture. Justice Breyer, do you think that the people of this country deserve to know a verdict in the election subversion case before November?
That's a legal matter. It's still going. And you have a lot of good questions, but they're all aiming at the same place. Big picture.
Big picture. Big picture. The people of this country deserve to know big picture. The big picture is I'm not going near.
That is an even bigger picture. Let me just ask you this. Can you tell me what you thought on January 6th as those events were unfolding on January 6th? The biggest picture is to me that I tell myself, don't go near these issues.
I was, I mean, you know, there are many, many, many, many, many advantages and privileges. When I think that I was a member of the Supreme Court of the United States and there are A few disadvantages. And one of those disadvantages is don't sound off on things that are relevant, might become cases, et cetera. Particularly whether you're on the court or not.
You were on the court. Well, let's, let's talk about Dobbs. It will be two years since Dobbs, as you know, ended the constitutional right to get an abortion. You dissented.
What do you think the impact of Dobbs has been? Well, it has been so what I put in this book and I want to stick to that because Dobbs is a recent case. I said I haven't said anything in this book that I didn't write when I was on the court in a dissent. And so in that dissent the three of us wrote together, Sir, Meyer, Kagan, and one of the things we said is what we fear.
They think this will be simpler, the majority, because it will lead it all up to the states. We don't think it will be simpler. We think that there will be a lot of more cases coming up. I mean, what's going to happen when a woman's life is at stake and she needs the abortion?
Do you think if a state forbids that, that that will come to the courts? Well, we thought it probably would and we thought there would be a lot of issues coming to the courts coming out of the decision to overrule Roe versus Wade. That's what we said in the opinion. Well, and you also said the majority's refusal even to consider the life altering consequences of reversing Roe and Casey is a stunning indictment of its decision.
Those are very strong words. We felt strongly in that case. Yes. Well, and I guess the question is do is what you anticipated.
Has it come to pass? No, that's what I want to stay away from. It's not that I don't have answers for these things in my mind, but I want to stay away publicly from. I want to stick as closely on a recent case as possible to what I said in this book.
And I did my best to stick to as close as possible to what is already public. In other words, we have totally opposite interests there because my interest is not to make news. Well, I'm trying hard. Let me ask you.
In Texas, there were estimated to be more than 26,000 rape related pregnancies in the first 16 months after the state's near total abortion ban was in effect. And part of the dissent does talk about the concerns about a patchwork of laws. Is that part, was that part of your concern when you dissented to Roe being overturned? I thought Roe should not be overturned.
I thought Casey should not be overturned. Can you see a world of possibility in which Dobbs is overturned one day, in another 50 years, say, don't know. It's possible. Oh, it's possible.
But who knows? How disruptive was the leak to the court and to the relationships that you describe? It was unfortunate. Were you angry?
You try to avoid getting angry with that. You try. In the job, you try to remain as calm, reasonable and serious as possible. I think it was unfortunate.
How much discussion was there about a potential compromise? Around 15 weeks. You know as much about that as I do. You.
You saw what Chief Justice Roberts wrote. And when you see what is written, the normal situation is before something is written in the conference, people in some form or other will discuss what they're thinking of writing. Not always and not identical, but there's usually some discussion. Did you think that a compromise was possible before the leak, around 15 weeks?
I usually hope for compromise. So you were hopeful there could be a compromise? No. You want to put words in my mouth?
I'm careful what I say on this because I say our interests are different. I don't want to make news. I've written what I thought. If you think there's news in here or in the descent, go right ahead, but I don't want to say something.
In addition, just to be clear, did you think a compromise was possible? I always think it's possible. I always. I always think it's possible, usually up until the last minute.
Were you surprised that the internal investigation didn't determine who was actually behind the leak? Did you? Yeah. You better ask if you want to ask that question to somebody who knows something about it.
Ask the people who do internal investigations like that. They're the people who ask. They occur all over the government. But did you feel betrayed by the leak?
Leak? That's a stronger way of putting what you've already asked. I was disappointed. I was sorry about the leak.
And do you have a theory of the case? Do you think that the leaker was someone who wanted to sound the alarm about Roe being overturned or wanted the draft opinion to be locked in place? Do you have your own theory? Do I have my theories about it?
Yes. You're not going to share them with me? Correct. Can you talk about in that broader context, though?
Do you have a sense of what the motive of the leader was? That's part of the theory. And given fair to say how, the fact that you're disappointed you were not behind this in any way. I'm not even going to say that.
I mean, I'd be amazed if it was a judge okay there. But I don't know. You know, we never know. Dobbs happened in part, obviously, because Amy Coney Bear replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court, who passed away while she was still on the bench.
Do you think there should be age limits on the Supreme Court? I've said and I think it's true. I don't think that's harmful. I mean if you had long terms, for example, they'd have to be long.
Why long? Because I don't think you want someone who's appointed to the Supreme Court to be thinking about his next job. And so a 20 year term, I don't know, 18, long term. Fine, fine.
I don't think that would be harmful. I think it would have helped in my case. It would have helped me having it would have avoided for me going through difficult decisions. When do you retire?
What's the right time? And so that would be. Okay. How difficult was it for you to decide to retire?
It's difficult. You missed being on the Supreme Court, of course, but yes, but you know, life, human life is tough. And moreover, you get older and 85, which I am now 83, I mean you've been there for quite a while and other people also should have a chance at these jobs. And at some point you're just not going to be able to do it.
And I think I could do it better. Nonetheless, there comes a time you have to figure out what's the right time. There are lots of considerations. Was the ideological balance on the court part of your consideration to retire when you did?
There were a lot of things there in probably part. More of my conversation with the former justice airs next Sunday. When we come back, I'll look back at how lawmakers felt about Stephen Briars. He stood for confirmation army.
The president is next. Welcome back. Trust in the Supreme Court is near an all time low. Yet another sign of our hyper partisan politics.
The last four confirmations to the high court all mostly came down to party line votes. And of course, President Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland was never even brought to the floor. But it wasn't always this way. Nominated by President Bill Clinton In 1994, Justice Breyer was confirmed by an 87.9 margin.
Here's how the Senate leaders at the time talked about his confirmation process. Let me ask you first about the Supreme Court, the nomination of Stephen Breyer. Senator Dole, your action? Good choice.
Not conservative But I think not as liberal as Blackmun. A man of great intellect, he's respected by Republicans and Democrats. Unless something unforeseen happens, it'll be an easy confirmation. Senator Mitchell, I think he will be confirmed easily.
He's an outstanding choice, solid record, a good jurist. I don't think these labels conservative, liberal, mean very much when applied to judges, especially now judges who have a lifetime tenure on the Supreme Court. I think history indicates that it's not particularly predictable either as to the issues that will occur during his tenure or what the reaction will be. I think he's a very good judge, a sound legal mind, good training, well experienced.
I think an excellent choice by the president. Very different time war from the panel next. The panel is back. Kimberly, I'm gonna start with you.
As our lawyer at the table, what were your takeaways from Justice Breyer? Well, first of all, it didn't surprise me at all that he was not going to speak about anything before the word. That is a known tradition at the US Supreme Court. But with respect to his book, which is about the reading of the Constitution, right, this idea from the conservatives that you look at the text and somehow magically it tells you all the answers about what the founders intended.
The book is meant to lay that bare. And it's not just justices like Breyer who talk about how just not just unwise, that is, but just how nonsensical it is. You actually can't do it because there are conflicts within different rights in the Constitution. There are others appointed by Republicans that have said the same thing.
Anthony Kennedy, David Souter. I wish that they would speak too about the misguided way that the conservatives are reading the Constitution in the name of originalism. And Stephen Dobbs is at the center of the argument that he makes. He says there are real world consequences and I think there's a good defense to be made for sexualism.
If we had more time, I would make it. But on Dobbs, it's interesting to me that Justice Breyer spent a lot of time talking about the compromise, the potential compromise on Dobbs. Isn't it better to just adjudicate rather than to see corporate compromises? Look, let's remember why it is body.
Folks in the courts have been politicized as the United States Senate politicize the Court. The justices themselves have not wanted to do this. This has been brought upon our politics and that what is broken is the confirmation process. Hopefully that process doesn't then destroy the judiciary.
But it is on the US Senate to fix this. Not the courts. And he talks about his concerns about the loss of public trust. Thanks, you guys.
That is all for today. Thank you for watching. We'll be back next week because if it's Sunday, it's Meet the. Everyone.
I'm Dylan Dryer, co host of the third hour of TODAY and mom to three wild Boys. I learned a lot my years as a parent, mostly that I don't have it all figured out yet. And I'm not the only one. This is my new podcast, the Parent Chat.
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