Sen. Chuck Grassley, pictured at a White House event with President Trump in December, has confronted the president over some of his tariff proposals.
The notorious “hot mic” often provides the public with the opportunity to hear what those in government really think, and to that end, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has let something slip, opening an issue that has persisted since the 2020 election.
“What would be wrong if they said Biden won?” the 92-year-old chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee loudly asked his aides during a Wednesday hearing, referring to President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees’ reliable tendency toward election denial.
Over the course of the second Trump term, his nominees have consistently dodged answering a straightforward question that Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CN) always asks those in the hot seat at confirmation hearings: “Who won the popular vote in 2020?” The answer is Joe Biden, but Trump nominees uniformly refuse to admit it, instead delivering carefully worded answers noting only that Biden was “certified” or “served” as president — a widely recognized effort to avoid the admission that Biden actually won the race, which would draw the ire of the current hot-tempered, election-denying president.
Blumenthal was in the middle of asking that very question of four judicial nominees when Grassley made his indiscreet inquiry, prompting surprise from aides who recognized the hot mic situation. While Grassley has publicly criticized Democrats for repeatedly pressing the matter, disparaging it as “political theater,” his hot mic moment undermines this assertion, raising important questions about nominees' ability to act as impartial judges in the face of fealty demands from the president.
While a spokesperson for Grassley was dismissive of such concerns when asked about the Senator’s loose-lipped inquiry, Trump has a history of attacking judges who refuse to adhere to his expectations. In April after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s signature tariff program and his effort to end birthright citizenship, the president called the three conservative justices who sided with their liberal counterparts “weak, stupid, and bad,” asserting they are "fools and lap dogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats,” and getting personal by claiming they are “an embarrassment to their families.”
For his part, Blumenthal remains committed to asking nominees about the 2020 race, saying, “I keep waiting for one or two of them to stand up and say, ‘I’m not going to say this nonsense. I’ve got plenty of other ways to make a living.’” During one recent hearing, he didn’t hold back, asking one evasive nominee, “Don’t you feel kind of like monkeys or puppets here?”
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