(CNSNews.com) - President Donald Trump defended his decision to appoint Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, saying that “elections have consequences” and he was elected for four years, not three.
During the first presidential debate held in Cleveland, Ohio, moderator Fox News host Chris Wallace asked Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden: “My first question to both of you tonight, why are you right and make the argument you make and your opponent wrong? Where do you think a Justice Barrett would take the court? President Trump, in this first segment, you go first.”
TRUMP: I will simply tell you very simply we won the election. Elections have consequences. We have the Senate. We have the White House, and we have a phenomenal nominee respected by all. Top, top academic, good in every way, good in every way. In fact, some of her biggest endorsers are very liberal people from Notre Dame and other places, so I think she's going to be fantastic.
We have plenty of time, even if we did it after the election itself. I have a lot of time after the election, as you know. So I think she will be outstanding. She's going to be as good as anybody that has served on that court. We really feel that. We have a professor at Notre Dame, highly respected by all, says she's the single greatest student he's ever had.
We won the election, and therefore, we have the right to choose her, and very few people knowingly would say otherwise. By the way, the Democrats, they wouldn't even think about not doing it. The only difference is they’d try to do it faster. There is no way they would give it up. They had Merrick Garland, but the problem is they didn't have the election so they were stopped. Probably that would happen in reverse also, definitely would happen in reverse. We won the election, and we have the right to do it.
BIDEN: “The American people have a right to have a say in who the Supreme Court nominee is. That say occurs when they vote for a United States senator and when they vote for the president of the United States. They are not going to get that chance now because we are in the middle of an election already. The election has already started. Tens of thousands of people have already voted. So the thing that should happen is we should wait.
We should wait and see what the outcome of the election is that's the only way the American people get to express their view is by who they elect as president and who they elect as vice president. Now what's at stake here is the president has made it clear he wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. He’s been running on that. He ran on that and he's been governing on that. He's in the Supreme Court right now trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act which will strip 20 million people from having insurance now, if it goes to the court.
The justice, and I'm not opposed to the justice. She seems like a very fine person. She has written before she went on the bench that she thinks the affordable care act is not constitutional. If it is struck down, what happens? Women's rights are fundamentally changed. Once again a woman could pay more money because she has a pre-existing condition, pregnancy. They were able to charge a woman more for the same exact procedure a man gets. That ended when we passed the Affordable Care Act. There's 100 million people who have pre-existing conditions.
They will be taken away as well. Those pre-existing conditions, the insurance companies are going to love this. It's not appropriate to do this before this election. If he wins the election and the Senate is Democrat or Republican, then it goes forward. If not, we should wait until February.
TRUMP: There aren't 100 million people with pre-existing conditions. As far the say is concerned, people already had their say. Okay, Justice Ginsburg said powerfully, strongly at some 10 years ago or so, she said a president and the Senate is elected for a period time, but a president is elected for four years. We’re not elected for three years. I'm not elected for three years. We have the Senate. During that period of time we have an opening. I'm not elected for three years. I'm elected for four years. 100 million people is totally wrong. I don't know where you got that number. The bigger problem that you have is that you're going to extinguish 180 million people with their private health care.
BIDEN: That is simply not true. ... He knows what I proposed. What I proposed is we expand Obamacare and We increase it. One of the big debates we had with 23 of my colleagues trying to win the nomination that I won was saying that Biden wanted to allow people to have private insurance still. They can, they do, they will under my proposal.
TRUMP: Your party doesn’t say it. Your party wants to go socialist.
BIDEN: My party is needed. I am the Democratic Party right now. The platform of the Democratic Party is what I in fact approved of. What I approved of. Now here’s the deal. The deal is that it's going to wipe out pre-existing conditions. By the way, the 200,000 people that have died on his watch, how many of those have survived? There are 7 million people that contracted COVID. What does it mean for them going forward if you strike down the Affordable Care Act?
TRUMP: You have 308,000 military people dying because you couldn't provide them proper health care in the military, so don’t tell me about this
BIDEN: I'm happy to talk about it.
TRUMP: If you were here, It would be 2 million people because you were very late on the draw. You didn't want me to ban China which was heavily infected. You're talking about 2 million people.
BIDEN: The point is that the president also is opposed to Roe V. Wade. That's on the ballot as well in the court. That's also at stake right now. The election is all --
TRUMP: You don't know what's on the ballot? Why is it on the ballot? It's not on the ballot.
BIDEN: It’s on the ballot in the court. Donald, would you just be quiet for a minute.
TRUMP: There is nothing happening there, and you don't know her view on Roe V. Wade. You don’t know her view.