Matt Gaetz: 'A House Democrat Chairman Did Something That Was Explicitly And Undeniably Racist'

 

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr

On Wednesday, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) spoke about Justice Clarence Thomas at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.

Matt in his House Speech said:

Democrats brought us FDR's inflation, they brought us FDR's recessions and now they're trying to get us FDR's attacks on the court. FDR's court-packing strategy. this isn't about judicial ethics or transparency the American people know that. 

Democrats don't like the fact that republicans while in power put folks on the court who are now ruling in adherence with the strict text of the constitution rather than their desire to engage in an anti-democratic process. And the other reason we know that this isn't about ethics and that this bill is just gaslighting to justify packing the supreme court is because the gentleman from New York Mr. Jones told us. I said the quiet part out loud that the goal here is to pack the court and attack an institution valued in America certainly in our jurisprudence.

And it's quite rich because I've heard my colleagues for quite some time accuse President Trump and house republicans for attacking institutions, damaging them irreparably this is the most egregious attack on the institution of the court one could imagine except maybe violence and we have that too.

And we still see a lot of leaders on the left unwilling to condemn that violence and unwilling to condemn the direct effort to try to intimidate judges who seem to be poised to overturn Roe V Wade.

But this bill draws a specific bead on justice clarence Thomas. I wonder why? I wonder why it was Justice Thomas that seems to get all this attention. Is it because he's a black conservative? Well, I asked the panel that we brought before us it was made up of folks that the democrats invited folks that the republicans invited made up of white people, black people, men, and women.

And I asked the panel about a charge that house January 6th committee chairman house homeland security chairman Benny Thompson had made against Justice Thomas. He called him an uncle Tom and since maybe I don't fully understand what was meant by that, I asked the panel is there anyone who believes that calling a black person an uncle tom could be not racist? 

Is there any world in which that is not a racist attack? And to a person, the men and the women the republicans and the democrats the white and the black not one of them would posit the theory that that was not racist.

So, we now sit in a circumstance where according to the witnesses before the judiciary committee a House Democrat chairman did something that was explicitly and undeniably racist. 

And I view this legislation as an extension of that effort to attack the court to delegitimize our institutions and to use clearance Thomas as a vessel because they don't like how the outcomes are going with this current court and it's quite shameful, he added in his remarks before completing his speech.