President Joe Biden on Saturday night warned about the possibility of former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, appointing two new Supreme Court justices if he wins re-election in November.
“The next president is likely to have two new Supreme Court nominees — two more,” Biden said at a campaign fundraiser in Los Angeles, adding that Trump had already appointed two justices that are “very negative in terms of the rights of individuals.”
“I think it is one of the scariest parts,” Biden said.
Biden’s comments came at the campaign fundraiser in Los Angeles where he appeared alongside former President Barack Obama, actors George Clooney and Julia Roberts and comedian Jimmy Kimmel.
The president participated in a discussion at the fundraising event with Kimmel and Obama that touched on several policy issues. Kimmel noted that almost two years ago, conservative justices appointed by Trump to the Supreme Court played a pivotal role in overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion access.
“These threats to abortion rights, to women’s rights, to even to birth control and IVF are not in our liberal imaginations anymore. They’re very real, and these decisions, these very personal, intimate decisions, are now being made by nine unelected judges — one of whom flies his flag upside down. One of the others drives around in a $267,000 gift on vacations,” Kimmel said, referring to controversies surrounding conservative Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who came under scrutiny for previously undisclosed trips given by a GOP megadonor.
“And I think we are all wondering, what can we do about this?” Kimmel asked.
“Elect me again,” Biden said, he added that the Supreme Court “has never been as out of kilter as it is today” and that Trump would “appoint two more flying flags upside down,” referring to recent scrutiny Alito faced over reports of an upside-down flag that flew outside of his home in early 2021.
Some Trump supporters who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, had flown an upside-down American flag during the attack amid the then-president’s baseless claims of a rigged 2020 election and refusal to concede.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said he would not probe Alito for the reported upside-down flags hung outside of his properties, but urged the conservative justice to step aside from two pending cases involving Trump and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Alito declined to recuse himself after he came under fire over reports of upside-down flags flown at his private properties. In letters to members of Congress last month, Alito maintained that it was his wife who decided to raise the contentious flags at their properties.
Chief Justice John Roberts also rejected a request to meet with Democratic senators to discuss Supreme Court ethics in light of reports of the controversial flags flown at Alito’s residences.