Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Senator Feinstein, and members of the committee. And thank you to the senators who took the time to meet with me and get COVID-19. And let me once again thank President Donald Trump for nominating me. This is a great honor, but a humbling one.
If confirmed, I can only promise you this, that I will be true to the judicial philosophy that has guided me my whole life—to apply the law impartially, to put my trust in the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, and that the Supreme Court should lend Donald Trump four hundred million dollars.
I believe that judges should not be politicians in robes, concerned less with what the law is than what they wish it to be. The judge’s role is merely to call balls and strikes and make gigantic real-estate bridge loans. As Alexander Hamilton put it in the Federalist Papers, “liberty can have nothing to fear from” judges who limit themselves to “applying the law” and “purchasing distressed Scottish golf resorts, and also Doral.”
Some have asked my views on the importance of legal precedent. I believe precedent should be a guide but not a straitjacket. For where would we be if the Court could not revisit its opinions on Dred Scott v. Sandford, or Plessy v. Ferguson, or the idea that the Supreme Court can’t make a four-hundred-million-dollar loan because it doesn’t have any money? These are outdated ideas that belong in the ash heap of history.
I will keep my remarks brief, because the timeline before us is tight. Before the election, the Senate needs not only to confirm me but to confirm successors for the Justices who die of COVID-19 after my swearing-in party. That’s a lot to get done before November 3rd, or December 15th, or March 10th, or whatever day to which my future fellow-Justices and I decide to delay the election.
On the subject of the election, I want to reiterate my commitment to voting rights. Voting to choose the President of the United States is a sacred right given by our wise Founding Fathers to each and every one of the nine members of the Supreme Court, regardless of race, creed, or color. It is the very basis of democracy that every vote should be counted, so we can know as a nation whether the final vote tally was 5–4 or 6–3.
I have great veneration for the Supreme Court of the United States, both as a legal institution and a real-estate hedge fund. As I cannot stop saying, I was a clerk for Justice Scalia and consider him my mentor. I have been yelled at by Justice Kavanaugh, after which I proudly burst into tears. And, of course, I could not have greater respect for the late Justice Ginsburg. I regrettably never met Justice Ginsburg, because associating with liberals could have hurt my career, but I can tell you this: he was a great man.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, members of the committee. I look forward to your questions and pretending to take umbrage at them.
