Another viral clip of a Trump judicial nominee is making the rounds on social media.
This time it concerns Wendy Vitter, whom President Donald Trump nominated for a federal judgeship in Louisiana. During a Senate hearing Wednesday, Vitter declined to directly answer a question from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., about whether or not she believed the Supreme Court was correct in its seminal 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education.
The landmark case overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which upheld the constitutionality of segregated public facilities on the basis of the “separate but equal” doctrine.
“Do you believe that Brown v. Board of Education was correctly decided?” Blumenthal asked Vitter.
“I don’t mean to be coy, but I think I get into a difficult area when I start commenting on Supreme Court decisions which are correctly decided and which I may disagree with,” Vitter said. She added that the ruling was “binding” and that she would “of course” uphold it if confirmed to the bench.
Pressed again for an answer, Vitter said that “if I start commenting on ‘I agree with this case’ or don’t agree with this case,’ I think we get into a slippery slope.”
As of Thursday afternoon, the clip of Vitter’s exchange on Brown had been viewed over 1.7 million views, and was retweeted over 13,000 times. It came several months after a video of another Trump nominee, Matthew Petersen, went viral when he failed to answer basic questions on court procedure during his confirmation hearing. Petersen withdrew his nomination less than a week later.
As his exchange with Vitter gained traction online, Blumenthal weighed in Thursday morning on Twitter. “Judges face many hard questions. This was not one of them. If you can’t affirm that the Supreme Court was right in desegregating schools, you don’t belong on the federal bench,” Blumenthal tweeted.
Vitter, the wife of former Louisiana senator David Vitter, is up for consideration for the New Orleans-based U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. She currently serves as general counsel for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of…
