CBS correspondent Jan Crawford ripped twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Wednesday, calling her statement on judicial confirmations "wrong on multiple levels."
In response to Clinton claiming that Republican nominees had "no relevant experience," Crawford said the former secretary of state was trying to score "cheap political points."
"You may have an issue with Bush/Trump nominees, but they generally (and certainly relatively speaking) are qualified and experienced," Crawford wrote in a Twitter thread. "And no one should ever assume Republicans don’t take 'seriously' the selection of judges."
"Dismissing those judges as political hacks is a disservice and cheapens our discourse. And a Yale-educated lawyer not looking to score cheap political points should know better," she added.
You may have an issue with Bush/Trump nominees,but they generally (and certainly relatively speaking) are qualified and experienced.
— Jan Crawford (@JanCBS) October 31, 2019
Dismissing those judges as political hacks is a disservice and cheapens our discourse. And a Yale-educated lawyer not looking to score cheap political points should know better
— Jan Crawford (@JanCBS) October 31, 2019
In a subsequent exchange with Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, Crawford continued to defend Republican judicial choices.
"I said it was wrong to paint all these judges with a broad brush as unqualified, wrong to say Republicans don't take judges seriously. That is factual and something everyone should be aware of," she wrote.
Clinton claimed that the Trump administration was appointing young, politically ideological, and unqualified judges for political purposes. She made the comments during a conversation with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Clinton's husband, former president Bill Clinton, at the Georgetown University Law Center.
She also said Republicans used to take the appointment of judges seriously until recent years.
"Even if they were trying to find somebody who would get to the result they wanted, they wanted to be able to say that this was a distinguished lawyer, that this was a judge with experience," Clinton said.
During Clinton's failed 2016 presidential run, she advocated for Congress to confirm President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. Garland's nomination was stalled by Senate Republicans, who argued that the next president should fill the vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia's death.