Glenn Beck Falsely Claims Obama “Didn’t Care” About Filling Judicial Vacancies

Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck, whose summertime plan to renew America’s covenant with God was thwarted by COVID, has never stopped lying to his audience.

The latest example of this is his (easily refuted) claim that former president Barack Obama didn’t fill 1,500 judicial vacancies because he was too lazy.

“Barack Obama left, what was it? Fifteen hundred judgeships open? It was some ungodly sum that he just didn’t care, he just didn’t appoint them,” Beck said. “So Donald Trump, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, they got together and they have filled all of those. And he’s still filling them. That’s not packing, that’s just not leaving it empty. Your job as president is to appoint judges to lower courts and to the higher court. That’s a consequence of an election. Barack Obama left all those judgeships open. I guess he shouldn’t have. It was his choice.”

Beck is wrong. Laughably so.

First, Obama couldn’t possibly have neglected to fill 1,500 seats when only 890 of them exist in total.

More importantly, by the end of his second term, 105 seats were vacant not because Obama wasn’t nominating anyone for them, but because Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell were obstructing any hearings. On the hope that a Republican would win in 2016, McConnell refused to let the Senate do its job, holding those vacancies open, then jamming through conservative justices the second he had his chance.

Obama did his job. McConnell and Senate Republicans refused to do theirs.

At the time, the GOP’s behavior was unprecedented. Now we know it’s just par for the Republican course. All the more reason for Democrats to expand the Supreme Court and lower courts if they get that opportunity. Playing by the norms doesn’t matter to the GOP, so Democrats should fight fire with fire.

The point is: Beck could’ve checked all these facts for himself. They’re easily verifiable. He chose not to, presumably because he knows his audience will believe whatever lies he tells them.

(via Right Wing Watch)