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In an age of advocacy journalism, April Ryan has long been a standout. Ryan routinely engaged in diatribes in White House press conferences during the Trump Administration and has openly opposed all things Republican or conservative. Now, the MSNBC contributor and Grio White House correspondent has declared that President Joe Biden was a “standard-bearer for what the Founding Fathers put in place.”
The reason? His much-criticized and partisan veto of The Judges Act. While even stalwart Biden allies like Delaware Sen. Chris Coons criticized the President for vetoing the badly needed, bipartisan measure to add new judges, Ryan declared it the work of a modern George Washington.
“It’s simple. This President Joe Biden, didn’t want to give President-elect Donald Trump a chance to add more conservatism into our courts, bottom line. I mean, you have so many people talking about how everything is weighed down right now. The White House on January 20 at noon will be Republican, the House, the Senate, what? Republican and the Supreme Court leans Republican. So this president wanted to ensure checks and balances…”
Ryan mixes rationales of avoiding adding conservative judges to retaliation for prior votes as a noble cause that harkens back to the founding. Of course, as discussed in my book “The Indispensable Right,” some like John Adams used the Alien and Sedition Acts to arrest their political opponents, but few point to that as the gold standard for the Founders.
Ironically, I have previously drawn comparisons between Biden and Adams. In vetoing the act, Biden once again shredded any claim to being a president who could put the public interest ahead of petty political interests. Other Founders like Washington did not even support the creation of political parties, let alone endorse raw partisan moves by presidents.
Indeed, Biden became the very thing that Washington wanted to avoid in saying that political partisanship: “…may now and then answer popular ends…by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government…”
The move by Biden is a disgrace. Our courts are overwhelmed by dockets that leave parties without any resolution for years. Every responsible and independent group in the area supported this bill as essential to supporting and maintaining our legal system. It ends his presidency on a cynical, obstructionist note.
Despite this, Ryan and others on the far left are applauding the act as just what they want to see in a president. It is one thing to discard any sense of integrity or responsibility, but do us a favor: leave the Founders out of it.
