One mistake the America First crowd has made is offshoring judicial selection to the “old school Country Club of Republicans,” Theo Wold, former White House Deputy Assistant for Domestic Policy under President Trump, who penned the original executive order on birthright citizenship, explained during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily.
Host Mike Slater asked Wold, who also served as former assistant attorney general, what he thought about the oral arguments on the birthright citizenship case in the Supreme Court. He said this is a perfect example showcasing a mistake made by the America First crowd – leaving judicial selection to, essentially, the Republican establishment.
“This has become something of a standard risk for me. But what I say my feelings are, this is the great mistake of the sort of America first crowd: Offshoring judicial selection to the Federalist Society and the Bush people and the old school country club of Republicans,” he said, noting that America First missed the mark in looking for virtues and the characteristics in these nominees that are important to the movement.
“But we did not [do that], and we selected for their criteria instead. So we’ve got a lot of proceduralists. We have a lot of people who are sort of bespect professorial types who like to look at the minutia and the subtlety of the law and the real virtues we should have been selecting for,” he added, identifying one of those characteristics as “public courage.”
“One of them, obviously, is public courage, being willing to take a stand on a case or controversy that may actually offend conventional opinion in society,” Wold said, adding, “You come into the case, there are three liberal votes already against you. They’re not interested in the arguments. They’re not going to be persuaded by the subtleties or the nuance that the Solicitor General presented.”
“They’re against it,” he said, breaking down the reality of the Court when it comes to the birthright citizenship case:
So you’re left with, you know, Alito and Thomas. They kind of show their hands early that they’re amenable. They support this move by the administration. So there’s four votes in the middle. There, Roberts right out of the gate. Gorsuch has, you know, he has these very bizarre theories about Indian country and how some administrative law stuff applies to Native Americans. And he already said, I think Wong Kim Ark cuts against you. What Wong Kim Ark is at the heart of the administration’s whole theory of the case. So Gorsuch is out. Now you’re left with Barrett and Kavanaugh. And Kavanaugh was all over the place, and Barrett is really concerned about soundlings, trafficked children and Native Americans.
In other words, Wold said this issue really is not complicated to the average person, but judicial selection has put these establishment types in positions of power who continue to overcomplicate these basic America First realities.
“My view was like, the court is missing it. You could explain this issue to grandma across the table, and she gets what the heart of the issue is. It’s about citizenship. It’s about who actually gets to give their consent in our government, and the court wants to talk about anything but that,” Wold said.
He added, “And so my feelings yesterday were, here we go. We’re stuck with the professorial debating club at Columbia University, and they’re so far removed from the lived reality of most Americans, and I think it was reflected in the questions that they were asking.”
LISTEN:
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
Read the full article here