Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stiff blew off the fact that the Supreme Court is indeed “the final arbiter of the law,” and states aren’t allowed to openly defy their rulings as we’re seeing Gov. Greg Abbott do in Texas.
Here’s Stitt on this Friday’s The Lead with Jake Tapper, claiming that Abbott and the rest of his enablers are above the law because they don’t agree with the recent ruling by the Supreme Court that allows the Biden administration to remove razor wire installed by the Texas National Guard along the border to deter migrants.
TAPPER: What Governor Abbott is doing, and what you and the other governors who have written this letter are supporting is defying the US Supreme Court. And I wonder if you have any concern that this opens the door for, let’s say, Democratic governors to defy US Supreme Court decisions with which they disagree, let’s say on gun rights. Because they think it’s in the interest of public safety, even if the Supreme Court says what they want to do is unconstitutional.
STITT: Well, we all agree that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. And if the Supreme Court gets something wrong, for example, if they tried to ban and say that we didn’t have a second amendment right to bear arms, I think the Constitution supersedes somebody in Washington DC telling us, you know.
And so, I think Governor Abbott did a really good job of laying out and declared an invasion based on Article I of the Constitution. The states have a right to defend themselves. The states created the federal government, the federal government did not create the states.
And the bigger picture here, though, Jake, is the American public is so tired of politicians, you know, doing something for political gain. The only explanation for the Biden administration to be cutting a razor wire, and letting people flood into our country illegally, is because they think politically, it’s going to help them in the next election. That’s the only explanation.
Tapper reminded Stitt that “when it comes to the interpretation of the US Constitution, it is the US Supreme Court that gets to make that final decision” and asked Stitt what he thinks about Trump trying to shut down the bipartisan border security deal that Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford was the lead negotiator on, and rather than answer, Stitt started touting how well things were supposedly going while Trump was still in office with his remain in Mexico policy, before accusing the Biden administration of wanting to use the issue for political purposes.
“I’m not the one saying that Trump’s trying to use it for the election,” Tapper responded. “Republican senators are the ones saying that Trump doesn’t want this compromise that Senator James Lankford from Oklahoma is working so hard on solving the problem, because Trump wants to use it.”
Tapper should have hit him for the fact that the ones playing politics with the issue, and with people’s lives, are Republicans. It’s also too bad he didn’t mention that the legal theory Abbott, and Stitt, are using to justify their stunt at the border is the same one Confederate states used to secede.