Debra Messing helps push CNN's 'unnecessarily misleading' hit piece on Brett Kavanaugh

Sarah D | 6:33 PM on August 06, 2018

Hold up, everybody! It’s time to “pump the brakes” on Brett Kavanaugh:

https://twitter.com/rob_bennett/status/1026579924596019200

Debra Messing agrees, you guys:

WHATTTTTTTTTTTTTT??? #StopKavanaugh #BlockBrett https://t.co/PIm3LXiTTQ

— Debra Messing (@DebraMessing) August 6, 2018

As well versed as Debra is on the Constitution, though, maybe she should pump the brakes on her outrage first.

https://twitter.com/natemcdermott/status/1026580938279583745

Sounds pretty bad, right? Yeah, well, CNN’s apparently counting on people not reading past the headline.

Oh look, another Fake News headline. https://t.co/dbG49di2ER

— pouncing and seizing Brad (@bradcundiff) August 6, 2018

Fake News is right. Or at least Very Dishonest News.

Brett Kavanaugh is correct https://t.co/pjPrEXwlkt

— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) August 6, 2018

https://twitter.com/RobProvince/status/1026583426063839232

See, here’s the thing:

Headline is unnecessarily misleading because it omits a critical caveat.

Kavanaugh said a president can decline to enforce a law believed to be unconstitutional "unless and until a final Court order dictates otherwise." He also noted that Congress also plays a role. https://t.co/bkb5Gyo51T

— Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) August 6, 2018

In 2013, Kavanaugh was speaking at Case Western Reserve Law School in Ohio when he was asked about signing statements, with the questioner noting that critics say that presidents can issue them to ignore provisions in laws they don’t like.

In response, Kavanaugh said that injured parties can take their grievances to court if they believe the president is not following the law — and that Congress can push back as well.

And Kavanaugh noted that if a president signs a bill “and says these certain provisions in here are unconstitutional, and we’re not going to follow those provisions, that is a traditional exercise of power by Presidents.”

In a legal opinion that same year, Kavanaugh took a similar position, saying that the president can’t ignore the law “simply because of policy objections” — and that the White House must abide by the law “unless the President has a constitutional objection” to the issue at hand.

“If the President has a constitutional objection to a statutory mandate or prohibition, the President may decline to follow the law unless and until a final Court order dictates otherwise,” Kavanaugh wrote in the August 13, 2013, opinion. He made a similar argument in a 2011 dissenting opinion.

That’s hardly as simple as “Presidents can ignore laws they think are unconstitutional.” But it’s all about the outrage, right? Well done, CNN. As usual. And thanks again to Debra Messing for doing her part to spread it around.

The tweet is clickbait. All he said was the each branch must make Constitutional assessments subject to final judicial review. Sort of like how the Obama DOJ decided not to support DOMA.

The real story is that CNN considers this a story. https://t.co/n8F01urU2p

— (((≠))) (@ThomasHCrown) August 6, 2018

https://twitter.com/Dj_MadArab/status/1026585666879143936

Well, yeah. And that’s the point, isn’t it?