President Biden asked the audience at an NAACP Detroit chapter dinner to consider whether they think former President Trump, if elected for a second term in the White House, would fill hypothetical vacancies at the Supreme Court with “anybody who has a brain.”
In a political speech at the NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner on Sunday, Biden attacked his political rival for appointing justices to the high court who ultimately contributed to decisions he views unfavorably.
“He brags about getting Roe v Wade overturned,” Biden said about Trump. “He not only denies reproductive freedom, but worsens the mortality rate for Black moms, who are nearly three times more likely to die from pregnancy complications than a white woman.”
“Trump openly encourages voter suppression and election subversion. He and his MAGA extremists gutted affirmative action,” Biden added.
Biden asked the crowd to consider who else Trump might nominate to lifelong terms on the bench, and he pledged to nominate judges who will “judge justly” as he asked for the crowd to elect him and Vice President Kamala Harris to another term in office.
“Let me ask you, if he’s reelected, who do you think you’ll put on a Supreme Court? Do you think he’ll put anybody who has a brain?” Biden said. “Folks, look: As Dr. King said, give us the ballot. We’ll put judges on the bench who will judge justly and do mercy.”
“Reelect Kamala and me and a Democratic Congress and we will help the NAACP. We will sign the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the Freedom to Vote Act and make Roe v Wade the law of the land again,” he said, referring to several pieces of legislation that are core to Democrats’ platform. In a divided Congress, legislation securing voting and reproductive rights must reach a high threshold of support to get passed.
Trump, while in office, appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court’s bench of nine. Trump and political observers on both sides of the aisle often credit his picks with some of the most high-profile legal decisions in the last few years, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed a federal right to an abortion.
