WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence celebrated Constitution Day at the Heritage Foundation, praising President Donald Trump for appointing originalist judges and attacking the recent attack on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“As a candidate, our president promised to appoint strict constructionists to our federal courts at every level in the tradition of the late and great Justice Antonin Scalia,” Pence recalled. “In the last two and a half years, President Trump has appointed 150 federal judges to our courts and they are all conservatives who are committed to upholding the God-given liberties enshrined in our Constitution, including the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, and the second amendment right to keep and bear arms.”
Yet this conservative return to the plain meaning of the Constitution has not gone unanswered.
“The Democrats and their allies in the media are obviously getting desperate. After dominating our courts for more than a generation, leading Democrats today are now openly calling for packing the Court. And this week, they’ve even taken to smearing a sitting justice of the United States Supreme Court with discredited allegations,” the vice president added.
Indeed, on Saturday, The New York Times published an article recounting uncorroborated sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The source behind the newest allegations was none other than Max Stier — one of the lawyers who represented Hillary Clinton during the Clinton impeachment, when Kavanaugh served on the other side. Stier’s claim has been denied by the very woman who was allegedly the victim.
Yet Democratic candidates for president in 2020 ran with the likely politically-motivated story and have called for Kavanaugh’s impeachment. Pence rightly condemned this posturing.
“The calls by Democrat candidates for president to remove Justice Kavanaugh from the Court are a disgrace, and nothing short of an attack on our independent judiciary,” the vice president said. “Justice Brett Kavanaugh is a good and decent man. He is a principled jurist and a credit to the highest court in the land and these attacks on Justice Kavanaugh must stop.”
Later on in his remarks, Pence announced that he would help preside over a naturalization ceremony at the White House that day. He looked forward to joining “a room full of new Americans who will come to the White House to swear their allegiance to this country and to swear their oath to the constitution of the United States.”
He cited the preamble to the Constitution by memory: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution of the United States of America.”
Then Pence added, “When they walked out of that hall in Philadelphia, history records that a little old lady walked up to Benjamin Franklin, asked him what kind of government they had created. He said, ‘It’s a republic, if you can keep it.'”
“As I stand here before you today, I have a grateful heart, not just as your vice president, but as an American, that we’ve kept it. We’ve kept it,” he added, nearly tearing up.
“We looked at that charge and that preamble. All of the things that I addressed today give evidence to the fact that the American people, whatever our differences are, that we have kept faith with the ideas enshrined in that Constitution. And I believe it is a day for, a cause for celebration,” Pence added.
It is a day “we ought to reflect on and be thankful for, but redouble our commitment today to stand by that Constitution … it’s always been the wellspring of our nation’s greatness,” he declared. “And as we keep faith with that Constitution, with the American people, I know, as people at the Heritage Foundation have known for nearly 50 years, that the best days of the greatest nation on earth are yet to come.”
.@vp Mike Pence tells @heritage: On #ConstitutionDay, celebrate the Constitution, knowing America has kept the Republic and our best days are yet to come! pic.twitter.com/KUkO3TcrJS
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) September 17, 2019
Watch his full remarks below.
Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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